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Water-Colour Studies of Bird Life.



bird-artist, and as might be supposed, liis work reflects Nature in

a less conventional or artificial way than that of many artists who

have received Academy or art school trainings, and especially is

he superior to those whose work is to provide scientific cabinet

Ornithologists with the transcripts that we know all too well in

orthodox works. Not that this is a personal or artistic virtue of

his, for the poor “scientific artist” (if such a being can be) as

the writer knows to his cost, has to “ render unto Caesar,” while

Mr. Lodge goes his own way and is his own master.


As he recently remarked to me “ One gets tired of drawing

birds in profile, and eliminating the light and shade so as to

show the local colour all over.”


That he goes his own wa\' in the matter of attitude is

shown by the remark made to me by an old pupil of Wolf’s—

“ You see a drawing of a bird by Lodge, in a peculiar attitude

and you think it is incorrect, but by and by, as you watch, you

see the bird in just the attitude Lodge has drawn it in.” Such a

remark applies to the study of the Grouse crowing—the attitude

is one in which I have seen a cock Pheasant when giving his

violent cry or alarm call, although I have not had the opportunity

of seeing a Grouse in that exact position.


Mr. Lodge’s early years were largely spent in engraving

drawings for such periodicals as the once charming “English

Illustrated Magazine” and such books as Lord Lilford’s “ Birds

of Northamptonshire,” and from doing much black-and-white

work, his earlier studies were apt to be deficient in colour, but

the time has come when he has freed himself from the restraint

unconsciously exerted by the black-and-white work, and can

allow himself to indulge in colour freely and to place it on the

sound artistic basis of tone.


Some of us, who know Mr. Lodge’s work principally by

the reproductions in black and white, or monochrone, will look

with pleasure at the soft and airy rendering of some of his skies

and water subjects, and especially will that be the case with the

subject of the Heron, flapping leisurely across a hazy sky, with

the sun just visible through the mists ; while an example of soft

rendering of the reflected clouds is found in one of the studies of

a Mallard. A charming water subject is that of a flock of Long¬

tailed Ducks, seen as they might be on a winter’s day, when the



