Rooster Fine Art Print
A high quality fine art print on Hahnemühle German Etching art paper of a Domestic Fowl Rooster, painted by wildlife painter Charles Collins (c.1680-1744) on 6th January 1749.
Superb Rooster Fine Art Print on Museum-Quality Paper
We've meticulously reproduced Rooster 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 Rooster 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 Rooster
Our Rooster 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 Rooster was among the works Collins produced for White.
The original Rooster watercolour is finely painted, with remarkable detail, allowing the plumage and features of the Rooster 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 Rooster, 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 Domestic Fowl Rooster
This watercolour of the Rooster, the adult male of the Domestic Fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus), was painted by Charles Collins on 6 January 1749. It forms part of the Taylor White Collection, a body of 18th Century natural history watercolours held in the McGill University Library, commissioned to document the birds and animals kept and observed in England during the period.
Description of the Rooster
Collins has captured the Rooster’s defining features with close attention to detail: the fleshy red comb crowning the head, the paired wattles hanging beneath the beak, and the long, arching tail feathers that sweep behind the body in a graceful curve. The plumage is richly layered, with a dense ruff of feathers at the neck giving way to the iridescent sheen characteristic of the breed. The stance and posture suggest the alert, upright bearing typical of the Rooster within a flock, a detail consistent with the observational precision found throughout the Taylor White Collection.
The Rooster’s Origins
The Domestic Fowl is descended from the Red Junglefowl of South and Southeast Asia, and its domestication is thought to date back several thousand years, making it one of the oldest and most widespread domesticated birds in the world. By the 18th Century, when this watercolour was painted, the Domestic Fowl was a familiar and economically significant presence on English farms, valued for both eggs and meat, and its varied plumage and distinctive form made it a natural subject for the kind of close observational study practised by Collins and his contemporaries.
The Habits of the Rooster
Within the flock, the Rooster serves a distinct social role, more vocal and visually prominent than the hens, a characteristic that would have made it an appealing subject for an artist working to document the range and variety of domestic and wild birds of the period. (This context on the species’ broader natural history and role is drawn from general knowledge of the Domestic Fowl rather than the original source description, and is included here to support the depiction rather than as a specific claim about this individual bird or painting.)
As with the other works in the Taylor White Collection, this watercolour reflects the scientific curiosity of the 18th Century, a period in which detailed illustration served as one of the primary means of recording and classifying the natural world, well before the widespread use of photography. Charles Collins was among a small number of artists engaged in this documentary tradition, producing precise, closely observed studies intended as much for scientific reference as for aesthetic appreciation.
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