Thanks to Warren Martin for the information about Frank Knight. Having
looked at his plate in Frith (1982), I'm all the more eager to get hold
of the new Pizzey volume.
Warren's reference to the Frith book and the artist Betty Temple Watts
also solved another puzzle - I was going to ask the list members if
anyone knew who 'BTW' might be. I was recently given a calendar which
contained six plates of bird paintings. The style seemed somehow
familiar, but I couldn't pin them down. The plates consist of:
Birds of Prey
Kingfishers
Waterfowl
Cockatoos
Rosellas
and strangely, Pigeons, but dated 1967 -and not one of those used for the
Frith book. Does anyone know where these Temple Watts plates come from.
Were they used in the other Rigby volumes? And why is there a different
plate of the pigeons?
By the way, the calendar is from a Geelong paint supplier, and is a
pleasant change from the usual fare of cottage gardens and cute kittens.
In case anyone does not have a copy of Frith (1982), here are some of his
comments from the Preface:
"Six of the colour plates were drawn some time ago by Mrs Betty Temple Watts
from birds in the aviaries of the CSIRO Division of Wildlife Research ...
It was inevitable that as time passed other plumages, not known while she
was working on the plates, would be discovered. To cover these, the
seventh plate has been drawn by Frank Knight of the CSIRO Division of
Wildlife Research and now all of the birds' plumages that are reasonably
distinctive are illustrated.
The line drawings are also by Frank Knight who is rapidly becoming one of
Australia's foremost wildlife artists. He worked from live birds and
from photographs and movie film taken by myslef and by him."
Frith, H. J. (1982). Pigeons and Doves of Australia. Adelaide: Rigby. p. 9.
I guess the Readers' Digest was lucky their photographic guide was
released when it was - there seems to be some hot competition in the
pipeline.
Russell Woodford
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