Archibald Thorburn - A covey of partridge in the stubble

Price Realized £13,800

signed and dated 'A. Thorburn 1927' (lower left)
pencil and watercolour, heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic, on buff paper
14 x 21 in. (35.6 x 54.6 cm.)

The present watercolour was executed in the same year as A Frosty Dawn (see J. Southern, Thorburn's Birds and Mammals, London, 1986, p. 84, illustrated in colour) and displays a very similar techinique, depicting the partridge in a stubble field with lapwings flying over head. As John Southern writes 'The foreground is both superbly and unusually handled, much of it being boldly dragged with broad brushfuls of colour deftly brought into perspective by the highlighting of stems of stubble...' (J. Southern, op. cit., p. 84).