Phasianus colchicus
This 18th Century watercolour of the Common Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) by Peter Paillou forms part of the Taylor White Collection, a body of natural history illustration.
The Range and Description of the Pheasant
Native to Asia, the Common Pheasant was introduced to Europe in antiquity, with archaeological evidence suggesting Roman-era introduction to Britain, and has since become one of the continent’s most familiar game birds. The species shows striking sexual dimorphism: the male, or cock pheasant, displays a long barred tail and plumage of coppery bronze and gold, set off by an iridescent dark green head and neck, bare red facial wattles and, in many populations, a white neck ring. The female is considerably more subdued, her mottled brown feathering providing effective camouflage during nesting and incubation.
The Habitat of the Pheasant
The Common Pheasant favours a mosaic of habitats: woodland edges, hedgerows, arable farmland and rough grassland, where cover and open feeding ground sit close together. It is largely ground-feeding, taking seeds, grain, berries and invertebrates, and is more often heard than seen, its explosive alarm call and clattering wingbeats a familiar sound across the British countryside from autumn through to the shooting season’s close in early February. Hen pheasants typically lay a single clutch of eight to fifteen eggs in a shallow ground scrape, with chicks fledging within a fortnight of hatching, though remaining flightless and vulnerable to predation in their first days.
Long before it became the well-managed game bird familiar today, the pheasant held a place in British life stretching back to mediaeval times, when it appeared on the tables of the nobility. By the 18th Century, when this watercolour was painted, selective management and the growth of organised shooting had made it a familiar and economically significant species, one worth recording with the same scientific rigour applied to Britain’s native fauna.
Paillou’s watercolour reflects this rigour, capturing the pheasant’s distinctive colouring and form with the close observational detail typical of 18th Century natural history illustration, when accurate depiction of plumage and anatomy was essential to the scientific record of a species. The Common Pheasant remains widespread today across woodland edges, hedgerows and farmland throughout Britain, its call and colouring as recognisable now as when this watercolour was painted.
c.1720 - c.1790
Peter Paillou (c.1712-1782) was a natural history painter of Huguenot descent, born in London to a family that had emigrated from France in the previous century. He trained under the London painter Jacob Tribble before establishing himself as an animal and bird painter. Following Charles Collins's death in 1744, Paillou took over as the principal artist for the naturalist and collector Taylor White, contributing well over 100 signed watercolours of birds, mammals and reptiles, with many more attributed to him on stylistic grounds. He continued to paint for other patrons throughout his career, including the naturalist Thomas Pennant, whose zoological illustrations Paillou supplied for British Zoology and Arctic Zoology, and was later elected a member of the Society of Artists, exhibiting watercolours of birds in London. Paillou died in 1782.
Credit: Taylor White Collection, Rare Books & Special Collections, McGill University Library.