Forwarded
on behalf of John Walter m("bigpond.net.au","jcwally");">
C.O.G.
members might be interested to know that the National Library
of Australia is publishing The Quintessential Bird: The
Art of Betty Temple Watts, available in October. The
Library holds the 34 bird plates that Betty painted to
illustrate Birds in the Australian High Country edited
by Harry Frith. The Quintessential Bird features these
plates, together with many enlargements of individual bird
portraits from the plates, and includes a short biographical
text by Betty’s daughter-in-law, Viola. Betty was a long-time
resident of O’Connor, Canberra, and is well known, not only
for her work for Birds in the Australian High Country,
but also for Pigeon and Doves of Australia (edited by
Harry Frith), for a pre-decimal and later a decimal stamp set
of Australian birds, and for many other commissions. One of
the plates in Birds in the Australian High Country
contains a painting of a male Gang-gang Cockatoo, which, with
its female partner, is on the cover of the Library’s new
publication. In 1959 Ruth and I were visiting the Temple Watts
in Canberra on our honeymoon and Aunt Betty, as we knew her,
was painting the Gang-gang from a live bird. Years later she
repainted the bird from memory for us and we proudly have this
painting on our lounge room wall.
ISBN 978-0-642-27731-2
2011, hb, 198 x 154 mm, 160 pp
RRP $34.95
John & Ruth Walter
Pittsworth
SEQ
PS. Viola Temple Watts will be giving a
talk at the NLA Bookshop in November. The actual date will be
announced later.
