3-082-798 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Ground Parrot - 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...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. It seems a pity that Mr. Marks could not be appointed portrait-painter in ordinary to the parrot-house at the Zoological Gardens, while a biography of each bird should be written by Mr. Bartlett, not only for future information, but to show how far the painter's insight into parrot character, as displayed in his paintings, is borne out by those who are brought into daily contact with bird life'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.