Pheasant Fine Art Print
A high quality fine art print on Hahnemühle German Etching art paper of a Pheasant, painted by wildlife painter Peter Paillou (c.1720-1790) in the early 18th Century.
Superb Pheasant Fine Art Print on Museum-Quality Paper
We've meticulously reproduced Pheasant 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 Pheasant 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 Pheasant
Our Pheasant 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 Pheasant was among the works Paillou produced for White.
The original Pheasant watercolour is finely painted, with remarkable detail, allowing the plumage and features of the Pheasant 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 Pheasant, 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 Pheasant
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.
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