Puffin Fine Art Print
A high quality fine art print on Hahnemühle German Etching art paper of a pair of Puffins on the sea shore, painted by wildlife painter Charles Collins (c.1680-1744) in June 1742.
Superb Puffin Fine Art Print on Museum-Quality Paper
We've meticulously reproduced Puffin 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 Puffin 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 Puffin
Our Puffin 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 Puffin was among the works Collins produced for White.
The original Puffin watercolour is finely painted, with remarkable detail, allowing the plumage and features of the Puffin 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 Puffin, 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 Atlantic Puffin
This watercolour of the Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica) was painted by Charles Collins in June 1742 and forms part of the Taylor White Collection, a series of 18th Century natural history watercolours held in the McGill University Library.
The Atlantic Puffin is one of three puffin species found across the North Atlantic, nesting in large, densely packed colonies on coastal cliffs and offshore islands. Rather than building an open nest, puffins burrow into soft clifftop soil or take over abandoned rabbit burrows, raising a single chick each season in the shelter below ground. Pairs are thought to return to the same burrow year after year, often reuniting with the same mate.
Description of the Puffin
Its most distinctive feature is the brightly banded bill, which develops its vivid orange, yellow and grey colouring for the breeding season before the outer plates are shed once the season ends, leaving a smaller, duller bill through autumn and winter. This dramatic seasonal change, together with its black and white plumage and vivid orange legs, has earned the puffin the affectionate nickname “sea parrot” and made it one of the most recognisable seabirds of the British and Irish coastline.
Puffins are accomplished swimmers as well as fliers, using their wings to “fly” underwater in pursuit of small fish such as sandeels and sprats, which they carry back to their chicks crosswise in their bills, sometimes dozens at a time. Outside the breeding season, they range far out into the open Atlantic, spending the winter months entirely at sea.
Monastic Naming of the Puffin
The genus name Fratercula is derived from the Latin for “little friar”, a reference to the bird’s black and white plumage, said to resemble monastic dress. Collins’s watercolour captures the puffin with the close observational detail typical of the period’s natural history illustration, made at a time when accurate depictions of British wildlife were still relatively rare and largely undertaken for private patrons rather than published works.
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