Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935), a Scottish artist, is well known for his paintings of wildlife, most notably his pictures of birds.
Thorburn was born in 1860 in Lasswade, Midlothian and came from an artistic family; his father was a portrait miniaturist for Queen Victoria. Archibald attended the St John’s Wood School of Art, which was cut short due to the death of his father, but he continued to pursue an artistic career and at the age of 22 his first illustrations were published in JE Hartings Sketches of Bird Life. Thorburn was later commissioned to illustrate Lord Lilford’s Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Isles, establishing his reputation as a gifted watercolourist.
Thorburn’s works were often exhibited at the Royal Academy, as well as being featured in numerous natural history and sporting books. Archibald did not however only illustrate other people’s books; under his own name Thorburn penned and illustrated British Birds; one such example split into four volumes was recently sold at the Bourne Auction Rooms for £60 alongside ornithological books by other authors such as Seebohm and Witherby.
Original works of art have also been offered for sale by Golding Young. One such work titled Grouse on the Moor, signed and dated 1919, featured in a Lincoln Fine Art Sale in 2019, the hammer price was £9000. More recently a work by Thorburn depicting a windmill beside an estuary sold for £550 at the Bourne saleroom in our end of year sale. While no birds formed the subject matter of this work, the piece is typical of Archibald’s ouvre, depicting the natural world around him, and in his usual medium of watercolour, pencil and heightened body colour.
If you wish to enjoy the work of Thorburn without the price tag of an original, prints are often offered for sale across our three salerooms; previous examples include Red Grouse in Moorland which sold for £22, and Grouse in a Clearing for £10.
