Lady Gwillim and the birds of Madras

Abstract

In 1924 Casey Wood, founder of the Blacker Wood Library at McGill University in Montreal, acquired a large portfolio of paintings of Indian birds from an antiquarian dealer in London, England. In addition to 121 watercolours of birds, the portfolio contained a dozen botanical sketches and 31 watercolours of Indian fish. After further research, Wood concluded that the birds had been painted by Lady Elizabeth Gwillim (1763–1807), the wife of a Supreme Court justice in Madras (now Chennai), during the brief period from her arrival in 1801 until her death six years later. The bird paintings that so impressed Wood were created through the intersection of three different stories: the first, the work of a particularly focused Englishwoman who arrived in Madras prepared to paint its natural productions, especially its birds; the second, the story of the Indian bird catchers and the long history of fowling in India; and the third, the story of the birds themselves, their migrations, forced and otherwise, and their entrapments, which brought them into relationship with the bird catchers and the painter.