A Greenland falcon on a rocky outcrop 1913

This is Archibald Thorburn's watercolor painting of a Greenland falcon on a rocky outcrop. I wonder what it was like for Thorburn to stand there and observe this magnificent bird? Was it difficult for him to stay still for so long, just watching, just painting? Look how he captured the light filtering through the feathers, turning them into a cascade of subtle white and grey tones. It's like he's revealing the bird's essence through delicate washes of color, almost as if trying to catch its elusive spirit on paper. And those piercing eyes! They seem to hold a world of wisdom, of quiet observation, mirroring perhaps the artist's own gaze as he tried to translate nature's beauty through his craft. What’s so great about painting, in my opinion, is that it’s so great at portraying that exchange of looking. Thorburn, like many painters, embraced the ambiguity of the medium, capturing the bird's presence, but also leaving space for our own interpretation.