Curlew Fine Art Print
A high quality fine art print on Hahnemühle German Etching art paper of a Eurasian Curlew, painted by wildlife painter Charles Collins (c.1680-1744) in the early 18th Century.
Superb Curlew Fine Art Print on Museum-Quality Paper
We've meticulously reproduced Curlew Fine Art Print on museum-quality fine art paper, matched to size. The 6in x 8in print is produced on Enhanced Matte Art Paper [EMA], a heavy-duty fine art paper with a smooth, non-reflective finish. The 12in x 16in and 18in x 24in prints are produced on 310gsm Hahnemühle German Etching paper [HGE], an acid and lignin-free archival paper with a fine tooth, offering our highest level of detail and longevity.
Both papers are fade-resistant and colourfast, using pigment inks designed to preserve the clarity and depth of the original artwork for decades. Every print is produced to order from a high-resolution master file, ensuring sharp detail and accurate colour reproduction.
* Please note that images of Curlew Fine Art Print on our website are lower resolution copies of the originals, for illustrative purposes only. The actual print uses high-resolution source imagery to ensure a crisp, clear, and visually stunning final result.
The Taylor White Collection's 18th Century Watercolour Painting of the Curlew
Our Curlew comes from the original collection of Taylor White F.R.S. (1701-1772). In the mid-18th Century, White commissioned the celebrated wildlife painter Charles Collins (c.1680 - 1744) to paint a number of specimens for his collection. The watercolour of the Curlew was among the works Collins produced for White.
The original Curlew watercolour is finely painted, with remarkable detail, allowing the plumage and features of the Curlew to be seen in stunning clarity. This depth of colour and detail has been captured brilliantly through the digitisation process and is replicated here for your home or office decor, or as a thoughtful gift.
Taylor White, a barrister by profession and later Puisne Judge for Chester, was a keen naturalist and Fellow of the Royal Society, elected in 1725. Over nearly forty years from the 1730s until his death in 1772, he commissioned 938 watercolours of birds, mammals, fish and reptiles, including the Curlew, now held at McGill University and painted almost entirely by two artists, Charles Collins and Peter Paillou. White was a founding governor of The Foundling Hospital in London and served as its treasurer for the last twenty-five years of his life. His well-connected social and scientific circle gave his artists exceptional access to specimens: his second wife, Frances Armstrong, was the daughter of General John Armstrong, Governor of the Tower of London and Chief Royal Engineer, and White's artists painted the lions, wolves and other animals of the Royal Menagerie there. He also borrowed specimens from the British Museum, and received rare and exotic birds from friends, including the naturalist Joseph Banks, who sailed to Newfoundland in 1766, and William Harrison, who brought back specimens from voyages testing his father's marine chronometer.
The Eurasian Curlew
The Curlew, known formally as the Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata), is the largest wading bird in Europe and one of the most instantly recognisable, distinguished by its long, downward-curving bill and haunting, bubbling call. This watercolour by Charles Collins forms part of the Taylor White Collection, a body of 18th Century natural history illustration notable for the close observational accuracy typical of ornithological art of the period.
Description of the Curlew
In appearance, the Eurasian Curlew is a large, mottled brown wader with long legs and a distinctively long bill that curves gently downwards along its length, a feature more pronounced in females than in males. Its plumage is streaked and speckled in shades of brown and buff, providing effective camouflage against the grasslands and mudflats it frequents. In flight, the bird shows a pale rump and finely barred underwing, and its call, a rising, fluting series of notes, is one of the most evocative sounds of the British countryside, often heard drifting across open moorland or estuary long before the bird itself comes into view.
The Range of the Curlew
Widespread across Europe, Asia and the coastal regions of Africa, the Eurasian Curlew shifts habitat through the year according to the demands of breeding and feeding. In spring and summer, it favours upland moorland, rough grassland and damp meadows, where it nests on the ground among low vegetation. Outside the breeding season, it moves to estuaries, mudflats and coastal wetlands, where its curved bill proves ideally suited to probing deep into soft mud and sand for worms, molluscs and crustaceans. Curlews are often seen foraging in loose flocks along the tideline, working the ground methodically as the tide recedes, and their calls carry clearly across open shorelines at dawn and dusk.
The Eurasian Curlew has declined significantly across parts of its breeding range in recent decades, principally as a result of habitat loss and changes in agricultural land management, and it is now considered a species of conservation concern in the United Kingdom. This gives historic depictions such as this one an added layer of significance beyond the purely artistic, standing as a record of a bird whose presence in the British landscape can no longer be taken for granted.
As part of the Taylor White Collection, this watercolour reflects the broader tradition of 18th Century natural history illustration, in which artists worked closely alongside naturalists and collectors to produce detailed, scientifically informed studies of birds, plants and animals. Charles Collins’s rendering of the Curlew sits within this tradition, combining artistic sensitivity with the observational precision expected of ornithological work of the period.
Beautiful!