Parrot of St Thomas Fine Art Print
A high quality fine art print on Hahnemühle German Etching art paper of a Parrot of St Thomas in a tree, painted by wildlife painter Peter Paillou (c.1720-c.1790).
Superb Parrot of St Thomas Fine Art Print on Museum-Quality Paper
We've meticulously reproduced Parrot of St Thomas 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 Parrot of St Thomas 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 Parrot of St Thomas
Our Parrot of St Thomas comes from the original collection of Taylor White F.R.S. (1701-1772). In the mid-18th Century, White commissioned the celebrated wildlife painter Peter Paillou (c.1720 - c.1790) to paint a number of specimens for his collection. The watercolour of the Parrot of St Thomas was among the works Paillou produced for White.
The original Parrot of St Thomas watercolour is finely painted, with remarkable detail, allowing the plumage and features of the Parrot of St Thomas 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 Parrot of St Thomas, 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 Turquoise-Fronted Amazon
This watercolour by Peter Paillou depicts a bird historically known as the Parrot of St Thomas, a name that reflects the naming conventions of 18th Century natural history illustration rather than the bird’s true origins. Despite its Caribbean-sounding title, the subject is in fact the Turquoise-fronted Amazon (Amazona aestiva), a parrot native to the forests of Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.
Description of The Parrot of St Thomas
The Turquoise-fronted Amazon is one of the most recognisable Amazon parrots, distinguished by rich green plumage offset by a vivid blue forehead and sun-yellow markings across the face and crown. Its underlying feathers show subtle variation in shade from bird to bird, giving individuals a distinct character that early naturalists would have observed closely when working from life or from specimens. In the wild, these birds favour the upper canopy of lowland forest and woodland edge, where they feed on a varied diet of seeds, fruit, nuts and blossoms, moving in pairs or small flocks and communicating with loud, far-carrying calls.
About The Tuquoise-Fronted Amazon
Turquoise-fronted Amazons nest in natural tree hollows, typically laying between three and five eggs per clutch, and are known for their long lifespans and strong pair bonds. Their intelligence, vocal ability and vibrant colouring have long made them one of the most popular parrot species kept in captivity, which likely explains how a bird native to South America came to be associated with the Caribbean island of St Thomas in the historical record, quite possibly through the pet trade of the period rather than any natural range on the island itself. The species remains widely kept today, though wild populations face ongoing pressure from habitat loss and capture for trade.
Paillou’s watercolour captures this striking combination of colour and character with the close observational detail typical of 18th Century ornithological art, a period in which illustrators worked to record species with scientific accuracy for the benefit of collectors and naturalists rather than for artistic display alone. As part of the Taylor White Collection, the work sits alongside other studies of birds, botanicals and mammals commissioned in the same period, offering a window into how naturalists of the time observed, recorded and classified the natural world, often working from imported specimens, traded birds or written accounts rather than direct observation in the wild. The collection as a whole reflects both the scientific curiosity and the occasional confusion, as with this parrot’s misleading name, that characterised natural history in the era before modern taxonomy and global communication made such misattributions rarer.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet