Perspective: Rex Brasher is the greatest bird artist you’ve never heard of
calls the “ornithological wars of the 1830s.” He was also an enslaver and deeply contemptuous of the abolitionist movement in both the United States and the United Kingdom, where he spent considerable time preparing his landmark publication, “The Birds of America,” published between 1827 and 1838.
In a 1961 biography of his uncle, Milton Brasher recounted a primal scene between Rex’s father, Philip, an amateur ornithologist, and Audubon, who had invited and then rebuffed a visit from the elder Brasher. After being turned away from the door of Audubon’s home in upper Manhattan, Brasher formed an inveterate loathing of the great man. “Audubon did not do his paintings from life as he was reputed to do; he did them from a dead bird skin hanging from the ceiling.
Brasher sought a more naturalistic treatment, without Audubon’s operatic drama. Although he hunted and collected birds as a young man, he gave up that approach later, preferring close observation to specimen hunting. His paintings have a lightness and transparency wholly different from Audubon’s heightened atmosphere. He also had access to museums with extensive specimen collections and the published work of predecessors.
Daniel Brooks, who curated a small 2022 exhibition of Brasher’s work at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, says that while Audubon may have recorded the “morphological details” of birds more accurately, Brasher’s birds were “much more accurate than Audubon’s, in terms of the way they appeared in life.” Nonetheless, wrote Brooks in an email to The Washington Post, Audubon’s work became more popular: “Apparently the postures of the grossly misfigured birds were admired by collectors.
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