Best in show

“Edward Lear’s magnificent owl – the pussycat partnership was to come later – is one of 7,000 beautiful bird prints and illustrations collected by the Victorian naturalist Thomas Eyton, bought by John Ruskin and given a long-overdue outing in this exhibition.

All the pictures are loose in scrapbooks and have never been on public display before, which means that the colours really glow.

As well as celebrating the work of the artists, the show also touches on some of the conservation issues of the 18th and 19th centuries when naturalists were becoming aware that some of the birds were dying out.

It’s ironic that the hunting methods they deployed to capture birds for records and research probably didn’t help.

Lear’s artwork may come as something of a surprise to people who know him primarily for his writing.

He was a self-taught artist, learning as he copied from old bookplates. At the age of 18, he decided to produce the definitive illustrated book of the parrot family, drawing every bird he could find in zoological collections.

Lear preferred to paint birds that were alive, which explains why all his pictures seem to capture – without wishing to anthropomorphise too much – the birds’ mannerisms and behaviour.

So many of the bird artists working right into the 20th century painted from taxidermy and inappropriate cabinet mounts, which resulted in stiff-looking figures.

But Lear’s skills in hand-coloured lithography enabled him to perfectly capture the plumage and the fluffing up of the feathers. This owl is staring into the distance and he’s probably sitting there waiting for his dinner to pass by. He’s very watchful, the light shines on his breast and his eyes glow.

I have put him in the section that looks at British birds but the eagle owl has not been seen in great numbers here for some considerable time. They were hunted almost out of existence because of the destruction they could cause and their desirability among collectors.

One or two that have escaped from captivity have begun to breed here and an image as striking as this is bound to provoke debate about how eagle owls might be properly reintroduced and how they might co-exist with native species.

Years later, of course, Lear teamed an owl with a pussycat in a rhyme intended as an entertainment for the children of his patron, Lord Stanley. He characterised himself as an owl after a child made fun of his portly frame and round spectacles.

I like to think that the limericks and caricatures he produced came directly from his close viewing of bird behaviour.”

Interview by John Holt. The Illustrated Aviary runs at the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, until 14 June

Louise Pullen is the Ruskin curator at Museums Sheffield