A Moonlight Night in the Open

Giclée Art Print by Archibald Thorburn

Under a starlit sky a covey of partridge slumbers away a crisp autumn night out in the open; squatting upon the empty stubble, heads out and tails in, they await the dawn.
One bird on watch, the rest asleep, the night ebbs steadily by. Without warning an owl looms like a ghost out of the mists that cling close to the low-lying land and hedgerows. The sentinel sits tight waiting to see which path the intruder will take. Should it swing towards them the look-out will promptly alert it’s companions, making them ready to scatter lest the intruder be an aggressor. But if it slips silently by, the covey will doze on, unaware, apart from the sentinel, of possible dangers passed.

Though a difficult and challenging work, produced from a limited palette of basically browns, greys, and sombre greens, Thorburn nevertheless admirably succeeds in capturing the stillness and the intensity of the occasion. The shafts of moonlight pick out the beaks of the birds and the hollow stems of harvested corn as the birds convincingly sleep. Lying upon his belly amid the stubble or bending behind a helpful hedgerow, the artist would sketch the poses of the sleeping birds in his sketch books before embarking upon the finished work.

Partridges invariably roost or ’jug’ in small coveys out in the open, well away from the hedge or cover, and lie close together in a loose circle, heads turned outwards as Thorburn has shown. If disturbed they will scatter in all directions, foiling the intruder as well as avoiding collision amongst themselves.

TEXT ABOVE INCLUDED SEPARATELY.