3-082-797 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Three Watchers - by H. Stacy Marks, R.A., 1895. 'Exhibited at the Fine Art Society, New Bond Street. Mr. Marks has enjoyed the credit of being able to endow birds of all kinds with human thoughts and passions...Mr Marks's birds in the present exhibition display his mastery over all merely technical difficulties...but he seems to have abandoned in no small degree that minute method of building up his birds' plumage which characterised his earlier work. There are, it is true, several exceptions to this broader style of painting, and in our opinion they are the most attractive; but it is evident that Mr. Marks has not studied Bewick in vain; and his present work, taken as a whole, shows more of that solidity - we had almost written "rotundity" - which the Northumbrian artist displayed. Mr. Marks's prepossessions obviously lie in the direction of parrots, cockatoos, and macaws, and he has a most remarkable facility for throwing into their apparently formless faces every conceivable human passion without in the least degree departing from accurate truth'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.