{"product_id":"george-edward-lodge-british-1860-1954-possibly-a-grey-crowned-crane","title":"George Edward Lodge (British, 1860-1954), (Possibly a Grey Crowned Crane)","description":"\u003cp\u003eGeorge Edward Lodge (British, 1860-1954)\u003cbr\u003e(Possibly a Grey Crowned Crane)\u003cbr\u003eInk wash and gouache on paper\u003cbr\u003eTitled and signed ‘G.E.L’\u003cbr\u003ePaper  size:  6  1\/4”  x  9”\u003cbr\u003e# AP00269\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile this drawing is untitled, the golden spray of stiff bristles on the crown, the velvety forehead, and the long-legged build identify it as a crowned crane, most likely the grey crowned crane (Balearica regulorum) of eastern and southern Africa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCrowned cranes are unusual among cranes in being able to perch and roost in trees, thanks to a long hind toe. They perform elaborate leaping, bowing dances, and their booming calls carry across the wetlands and grasslands where they feed. The grey crowned crane is the national bird of Uganda and appears on that country’s flag.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGEORGE EDWARD LODGE (BRITISH, 1860-1954)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eGeorge Edward Lodge was born on December 3, 1860 at Scrivelsby, Lincolnshire, the seventh of eleven children and fifth son of the Reverend Samuel Lodge (1829-1897), Canon of Lincoln Cathedral and rector of Scrivelsby. The ecclesiastical household at the family rectory was a deeply cultured one, in which the observation and description of the English countryside were part of daily life. Educated entirely at home, his earliest sketchbooks were filled with the game birds, waders, and raptors of the surrounding countryside.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eNatural history was a shared pursuit among the Lodge siblings, and George’s lifelong dedication to ornithology grew from the example of his elder brother, Reginald Badham Lodge (1852-1937), who became one of the pioneering bird photographers in Britain. The two brothers often worked in tandem in the field, with Reginald’s photographs of nests and living birds providing George with invaluable scientific reference, while George’s painted interpretations brought artistic life to Reginald’s documentary images. This quietly collaborative sibling relationship, uniting the lens and the brush, is one of the most remarkable examples of family influence in late-Victorian natural history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eFrom boyhood, Lodge was an accomplished field naturalist. He taught himself taxidermy, mounting his first specimen, an owl, at the age of twelve, an experience that gave him an intimate understanding of avian musculature, feather structure, and posture that would distinguish his painted work for the next eight decades. He was also a falconer from his earliest days; a practice inherited through family connections to the sporting gentry of the shires and one that put living hawks and falcons quite literally in his hands throughout his life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eLodge’s formal artistic training began at the Lincoln School of Art, where he won fourteen prizes for drawing before moving to London to serve an apprenticeship with an engraving firm. Contributing engraved work to the Badminton Library sporting volumes and to the ornithological publications of Henry Seebohm (1832-1895). However, watercolor and gouache became his signature media. Lodge worked fluently in both transparent watercolor and opaque body color (gouache), typically combining them on paper with ink under-drawing. He painted almost always from life, where he could, supplementing field studies with carefully prepared skins and mounted specimens. His knowledge of taxidermy and falconry gave his watercolors their remarkable sense of living weight.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eLodge traveled widely to gather material. He visited Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), Japan, the West Indies, the United States, and Scandinavia, but he was most at home in the Scottish Highlands and on the salmon rivers of Norway, both of which he visited annually for decades. In about 1920, Lodge settled at Camberley, Surrey, in a house on Upper Park Road that he renamed Hawk House, where he lived with his sister and niece and kept his studio, his taxidermy, and a working collection of hawks and falcons until his death at 93.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eLodge’s first important patron was Thomas Littleton Powys, 4th Baron Lilford (1833-1896), President of the British Ornithologists’ Union, who commissioned plates for his \u003ci\u003eNotes on the Birds of Northamptonshire and Neighbourhood\u003c\/i\u003e (1895). On that project Lodge worked alongside Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935), whose technique for painting plumage he admired above all others and with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. It was Thorburn who, having declined a commission from the New Zealand Government in the early 1910s to produce plates for a proposed replacement for Buller’s \u003ci\u003eBirds of New Zealand\u003c\/i\u003e, recommended Lodge in his place. Beginning in 1913, Lodge studied New Zealand bird skins in the Natural History Museum and other British collections and eventually delivered ninety watercolor plates to the Wildlife Service of the Department of Internal Affairs. Although the illness of the author prevented publication, the plates survive and constitute one of the great bodies of natural history watercolors produced in the twentieth century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eLodge’s patrons and collaborators from across the scientific establishment were many. He illustrated the Rothschild’s \u003ci\u003eExtinct Birds\u003c\/i\u003e (1907), Beebe’s \u003ci\u003eA Monograph of the Pheasants\u003c\/i\u003e (1918-1922), Howard’s \u003ci\u003eTerritory in Bird Life\u003c\/i\u003e (1920) and \u003ci\u003eAn Introduction to the Study of Bird Behaviour\u003c\/i\u003e (1929), and painted plates for Baker’s \u003ci\u003eThe Birds of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight\u003c\/i\u003e (1905), and Kirkman’s \u003ci\u003eThe British Bird Book\u003c\/i\u003e. Through the Old Hawking Club, of which he was a long-standing member, Lodge also illustrated E. B. Michell’s celebrated articles on “Modern Falconry” in the English \u003ci\u003eIllustrated Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e in 1885-1886.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe culminating commission of Lodge’s life was David Armitage Bannerman’s twelve-volume \u003ci\u003eThe Birds of the British Isles\u003c\/i\u003e (1953-1963), prepared under the Longmans “readership series” imprint. Lodge undertook this Herculean task in his ninth decade, producing 389 plates depicting 426 species. He began the work at the age of eighty-two and continued until his eyesight finally failed; the final volumes appeared after his death in 1954.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePlease feel free to contact us with questions by phone at 215.735.8811,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eor by email at \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"mailto:loricohen@aradergalleries.com\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eloricohen@aradergalleries.\u003cwbr\u003ecom\u003c\/wbr\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Arader Galleries","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39346940280893,"sku":"","price":1800.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1208\/8894\/products\/lodge_UntitledPlumedbird.jpg?v=1624640682","url":"https:\/\/aradergalleries.com\/products\/george-edward-lodge-british-1860-1954-possibly-a-grey-crowned-crane","provider":"Arader Galleries","version":"1.0","type":"link"}