206 Mr. Herbert Goodchild,


matter of choice of subjects, and one may see him at his best,

and also (if I may say so) at his worst. The subjects are chiefly

Birds of Prey and Game Birds with a few studies of Wild Fowl.

In all of them the subject is treated in the opposite way to what

a landscape painter would treat it, i.e. the bird is by far the chief

and, in nianj* cases, the whole consideration ; the landscape

element being often almost entirely eliminated, while the bird

itself is studied with scrupulous care.


Birds of Prey, we believe, are Mr. Lodge's great favourites,

and whether they are or not, one can see how he regards them,

both by the number of studies of them and by the pains lavished

on their portraits. No. i in the catalogue is of a Peregrine's

eyrie, with three young birds, nearly fledged, but still with down

on their heads and bodies, and their wing and tail feathers short.

They have wandered a little from the nest, if such it can be

•called, and are apparently awaiting the return of one or other

parent with a freshly killed Plover, Grouse or Teal. At a little

distance one of the birds seems to disappear, and the others might

almost be growing out of the rock, so well does the immature

plumage harmonise with the surroundings of their bleak moun-

tain home. No. 2 is a covey of Partridges flying over an expanse

of snow, and in this subject Mr. Lodge is much more faithful to

nature than to the traditions or conventionalities of art— there is

much more snow than Partridge. In No. 3 we see a group of

Grouse at rest, and in one of the birds, a male, we especially

notice a departure from the orthodox way of depicting birds,

that is in a complete state of one phase of plumage (a thing

rarely met with in the Red Grouse, which usually shows feathers

of two phases of plumage, when once it has begun to change

from the nestling state). The piece of moorland also is more

the actual than the conventional, and the gnarled stalks of dead

heather in the foreground are nearer reality than the eternally

blooming heather with which we are supplied by other painters.

Neither the birds nor the surroundings are conventional in the

least degree and we should like to see subjects by other painters

treated with the same regard for truth. No. 4 is a pair of Reed

Buntings, depicted as the present writer (and doubtless Mr.

Lodge) saw them in the reeds fringing Wickeu Fen — the only



