Muscardinus avellanarius
Charles Collins’s Dormouse, painted in 1736, is a delicately observed study of the Hazel Dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius), Britain’s only native dormouse species. Rendered in watercolour with the precision typical of 18th Century natural history illustration, the work captures the animal’s rounded form, large dark eyes and thick, furred tail, features that distinguish it from other small British mammals such as the wood mouse or bank vole.
Description of the Dormouse
The Hazel Dormouse takes its name from its strong association with hazel coppice and mixed deciduous woodland, habitats that would have been far more widespread across the English countryside in Collins’s day than they are now. Almost entirely nocturnal and highly arboreal, it spends much of its life in the tree canopy and understorey, rarely descending to the ground. This secretive, largely nighttime existence meant that even in the 18th Century, direct observation of the species was uncommon, making studies such as this one a genuine record rather than a casual sketch.
Habits of the Dormouse
One of the dormouse’s most distinctive characteristics is its capacity for torpor. Through the summer and autumn it builds up substantial fat reserves, feeding on hazelnuts, berries, flowers and insects, before retreating into hibernation from around October to April. During hibernation it curls tightly into a ball, a posture that may well have informed the composition Collins chose for this study. This long period of dormancy, considerably more pronounced than in most other British mammals, is the origin of the animal’s common name and would have marked it out as a subject of particular curiosity for naturalists of the period.
Collins’s watercolour reflects the close, first-hand observation that characterised the finest natural history art of the 18th Century, work produced not for decoration alone but as a genuine attempt to document Britain’s native wildlife with scientific accuracy. Artists working in this tradition typically studied specimens directly, whether living, preserved or freshly collected, recording colour, texture and proportion with an exactness that later supported both scientific classification and public understanding of species many people would never otherwise encounter.
This piece forms part of the Taylor White Collection, a body of 18th Century watercolours held by McGill University Library, encompassing birds, botanical subjects and mammals. Alongside the ornithological studies that dominate the collection, works such as this Dormouse demonstrate the breadth of interest shown by 18th Century naturalists and their artists, extending beyond birds to the smaller, less conspicuous mammals of the British countryside. Today, the Hazel Dormouse is a protected species in the UK, its numbers having declined significantly due to habitat loss, which lends studies like Collins’s an added dimension as a record of a once more familiar countryside animal.
c.1680 - 1744
Charles Collins (c.1680-1744) was a painter of birds, mammals and still life, born in Dublin and trained in Ireland before establishing himself in London. He built his early reputation on still-life subjects, including a series of fruit studies for Robert Furber's Twelve Months of Fruit (1732), before turning increasingly to natural history illustration. From 1736, Collins worked alongside Peter Paillou to produce watercolours of British birds and mammals for the naturalist and collector Taylor White, contributing over 200 signed works to White's collection. His animal studies are noted for their lifelike composition, typically set against a grassy mound or tree stump rather than a plain background, and for the accuracy with which plumage and colouring were recorded from live or preserved specimens. Collins died in London in 1744, described at the time as Bird Painter to the Royal Society.
Credit: Taylor White Collection, Rare Books & Special Collections, McGill University Library.