Nightingale Fine Art Print
A high quality fine art print on Hahnemühle German Etching art paper of a pair of Nightingales in a tree, painted by wildlife painter Charles Collins (c.1680-1744) in 1737.
Superb Nightingale Fine Art Print on Museum-Quality Paper
We've meticulously reproduced Nightingale 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 Nightingale 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 Nightingale
Our Nightingale 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 Nightingale was among the works Collins produced for White.
The original Nightingale watercolour is finely painted, with remarkable detail, allowing the plumage and features of the Nightingale 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 Nightingale, 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 Common Nightingale
The Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), also known as the Common Nightingale, is celebrated above all for its song. Renowned for elaborate, powerful phrases delivered both by day and, more famously, after dark, its voice has inspired poets, composers and storytellers for centuries and given the species a cultural presence far beyond its modest appearance.
Description of the Nightingale
In plumage, the Nightingale is unassuming: slightly larger than a Robin, with warm brown upperparts, a distinctive rufous tail and pale buff underparts. This understated colouring stands in deliberate contrast to its voice, and much of the bird’s appeal lies in that very disparity between sound and sight.
The Range of the Nightingale
The species breeds across much of Europe, into Asia Minor and North Africa, favouring dense scrub and thick undergrowth close to the ground, where it can nest largely unseen. Nightingales are long-distance migrants, wintering in sub-Saharan Africa and returning to their breeding grounds each spring.
Within the UK, the Nightingale is now largely confined to the South East of England. Numbers here have fallen markedly in recent decades, a decline widely attributed to habitat loss and changes in woodland management, even as populations across mainland Europe remain comparatively stable.
This watercolour of the Nightingale was painted by Charles Collins in 1737 and forms part of the Taylor White Collection, a body of 18th Century natural history watercolours held in the McGill University Library. Rediscovered and reproduced here, it offers a faithful record of the species as observed by one of the period’s most accomplished natural history artists, painted at a time when careful, direct observation of birds in the field was still a comparatively new discipline.
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