Jack Snipe 1933

Archibald Thorburn made this watercolour painting of a Jack Snipe sometime around 1933. It's so interesting to see how the artist uses colour, layering browns, yellows and greens to build up the bird’s camouflage. You can feel the care and attention he gives to his subject. The paint is applied thinly, allowing light to reflect from the paper. Look at the way the texture varies – from the soft, blurred edges of the grasses to the precise detail of the snipe's feathers. There's real joy in the making of this image. The eye of the snipe is particularly interesting. It's a tiny spot of dark paint, but it gives the bird its vitality and alertness. Thorburn reminds me of Audubon, in that he understood that to really see something, you have to study it closely, in nature. With a painting like this, Thorburn invites us to look closely too, at nature's beauty and complexity.