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Joseph Bartholomew Kidd, after John James Audubon

Sharp-Tailed Finch, 1831/1833

Not on View

Medium

pencil and oil on millboard

Dimensions

overall: 48.3 x 29.9 cm (19 x 11 3/4 in.)

framed: 58.3 x 39.9 x 1.9 cm (22 15/16 x 15 11/16 x 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of E.J.L. Hallstrom

Accession Number

1951.9.5

Artists / Makers

Joseph Bartholomew Kidd (painter) Scottish, 1808 - 1889

John James Audubon (artist after) American, 1785 - 1851

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Provenance

Painted for John James Audubon [1785-1851]; by descent in the Audubon family to his great-grandson, Leonard Benjamin Audubon [1888-1951], Sydney, Australia;[1] sold 1950 to E.J.L. Hallstrom [1886-1970], Sydney, Australia; gift 1951 to NGA.

[1] Handwritten in ink across a label on the back of the painting is: "W.B. Audubon." John James Audubon had four children, one of whom was John Woodhouse Audubon [1812-1862]. The younger Audubon married twice; he had two children with his first wife, Maria Bachman [1816-1840], and seven with his second wife, Caroline Hall [1811-1899]. Of the seven, five lived to adulthood, and one of them, William Bakewell Audubon [1847-1885], left the United States for Australia in either 1880 or 1882. He began a new life raising sheep near Yass, a small town about 250 miles west of Sydney. He married Lucy Ann Grovenor in 1885, and they had two children, Leonard Benjamin and Ella Caroline. According to a letter of 9 July 1952 from Ella Caroline Audubon to John Walker (in NGA curatorial files), Audubon paintings were sent to Australia in 1899 or 1900, which would correspond with the death of Caroline Hall Audubon on 1 February 1899. Miss Audubon's letter states that her father arrived in Australia 8 April 1880. However, Walter Audubon gives 21 January 1882 as the date that William Bakewell Audubon sailed for Australia, and he writes also that it was William who "brought with him many paintings by his grandfather, John James Audubon" (see Walter Audubon, Last of the Audubon Line: The Descendants of John Woodhouse Audubon, Franklin, North Carolina, 2002: 72-79).

Associated Names

Audubon, John James
Audubon, Leonard Benjamin
Hallstrom, E.J.L.

Exhibition History

1951: Audubon Centennial Exhibition, National Audubon Society, New York, January-February 1951, no. 36, as The Sharp-Tailed Sparrow.

1951: Audubon Paintings and Prints from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., September-October 1951, no cat.

1954: [John James Audubon exhibition for the benefit of the Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine], Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1954.

1969: Extended loan for use by the White House, Washington, D.C., 1969-1978.

1981: Extended loan for use by William J. Casey, Director, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C., 1981-1987.

Technical Summary

The support is a commercially prepared millboard,[1] primed recto and verso with a proprietary ground of thin opaque white oil paint (on the verso the white is coated with a black layer). Infrared reflectography reveals a thin, dry, pencil underdrawing. The painting is executed in thin, opaque layers, carefully but fluidly applied, with some low impasto in the highlights and nest; there are some pentimenti in the rendering of the grasses. The craquelure in the dark brown paint of the nest and grasses is suggestive of bitumen. The painting is otherwise in good condition; losses are minimal. The thinly applied synthetic resin varnish has discolored yellow slightly.

[1] The label reads: "Rowney & Forster, artists' colourmen, 51, Rathbone Place, London," who advertised themselves as preparing "IMPROVED/Flemish Ground Mill Boards." This was the firm Audubon favored. "I wish you to try first Rowney & Forster and purchase those (the whole I mean) as low and [on] as long a credit as you can" (Audubon to Robert Havell, Jr., 18 November 1830; Howard Corning, ed., Letters of John James Audubon 1826-1840, 2 vols. [Boston, 1930], I: 124).

Bibliography

1963: Fries, Waldemar H. "Joseph Bartholomew Kidd and the Oil Paintings of Audubon's Birds of America." The Art Quarterly 26 (1963): 345.

1964: Ford, Alice. John James Audubon. Norman, Oklahoma, 1964: 443.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 164, repro., as Sharp-Tailed Sparrow.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 184, repro., as Sharp-Tailed Sparrow.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 306, as Sharp-Tailed Sparrow.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 215, repro., as Sharp-Tailed Sparrow.

1992: Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 144-145, repro. 144.