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| John Gerrard Keulemans (1842–1912) | ||||||||||
| Keulemans, an illustrator, lithographer, and painter, was one of the most prolific bird artists of the nineteenth century. Born in Rotterdam, he showed drawing talent from an early age, and his parents nurtured his passion for both art and wildlife. By the age of eighteen, he had secured a position at the Leiden Museum, and by twenty, he was travelling to Africa and other locations to work on natural history projects. In 1869, Keulemans moved to London, where he would spend the majority of his career. As Britain was a key producer of bird books, Keulemans received many commissions for his illustrations, his first being for Richard Bowdler Sharpe's Monograph of the Alcedinidae, or Family of Kingfishers. Over his career, he produced between four and five thousand illustrations, contributing to more than 115 publications. Among the more notable were the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, Ibis, and the British Ornithological Union. He worked primarily from bird specimens, and his drawings were both anatomically precise and composed with aesthetic appeal. He also produced a significant number of illustrations of extinct birds, which was rare for artists of his time. The colouring of Keulemans' lithographs was often carried out by semi-skilled artists in an assembly line process, which sometimes led to results that did not meet his high standards. He died at Ilford. | ||||||||||
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Art