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NLA News - home April 2003 Volume XIII Number 7
Birds of a Feather
Watercolour of two Uralcyon sylvia or White-Tailed Kingfisher on a branch. Reproduced from plate 341 of The Birds of Australia by Gregory M. Mathews. Vol. VII (London: Witherby & Co., 1918–19)
Uralcyon sylvia or White-Tailed Kingfisher
Reproduced from plate 341 of The Birds of Australia by Gregory M. Mathews. Vol. VII
(London: Witherby & Co., 1918–19)

Christobel Mattingley celebrates the legacies of Gregory Mathews, ornithologist extraordinaire, and Lilian Medland, illustrator par excellence

Bird-nesting and egg collecting,  a schoolboy’s hobbies, ultimately led to one of the most significant gifts the National Library has ever received: the Mathews Collection, donated by its creator in 1939. Gregory Mathews enjoyed those typical boyhood pastimes in the 1880s and 1890s but, when a fellow student at The King’s School, Parramatta, showed him how to skin a bird, his interest developed in a new direction. It became a lifelong dedication to the study of the diversity of Australian birds and the classification of their species.

Inspired by the published works of pioneer observer John Gould, Mathews resolved to produce a modern book on an equally grand scale. This resulted in the self-publication of The Birds of Australia (1910–1927) in 12 volumes, with a hand-coloured figure of every species, over 100 more than were known to Gould. Accepted as the standard reference, it was described as ‘the largest formal work ever produced on the birds of a single country’. In the course of this labour of love, Mathews examined over 100 000 bird skins, most of them 20 times or more.

Acquisition of the Mathews Collection has proven a double bonus, for it contains images created by one of Mathews’ most important collaborators, illustrator Lilian Medland. Despite her dedication and ability, and her efficiency in delivering artwork to schedule, Medland, because of unfortunate circumstances, never had the satisfaction of seeing the greater part of her outstanding body of work in print. Although a small number of images has been used without attribution, a larger proportion has never been seen by the public. Fortunately some are preserved in the Mathews Collection.

Black and White photograph of Tom Iredale and Gregory Mathews (head to shoulders) by Reginald Haines
Reginald Haines
Portrait of Tom Iredale and Gregory Mathews,
8 June 1923

gelatin silver photograph on resin-coated paper;
16 x 21 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an11855461

As a man of private means, Gregory Macalister Mathews was in a position to pursue his passion. Born in 1876 at Biamble Station near Dubbo, NSW, on leaving school he worked as a drover in North Queensland, then turned to goldmining at Charters Towers. After dealing successfully in mining shares, he married and sailed for England, ‘with the century still in swaddling clothes’, as he wrote in his engaging memoir, Birds and Books: The Story of the Mathews Ornithological Library (1942). This single slim volume contrasts with his magnum opus which friends called ‘the Gregorian Chants’.

Arriving in London in 1902 in time for King Edward VII’s coronation, Mathews acquired a farm near Winchester. Here he embarked on correspondence with collectors and ornithologists worldwide in his indefatigable study of nomenclature and taxonomy. He began 40 years of systematic collecting, aiming to make both his skin collection and his library the best in the world.

By purchasing skins, or by commissioning field collectors, Mathews began to accumulate a collection of Australian bird skins which eventually numbered well over 30 000. Simultaneously, as a customer of antiquarian book dealers (including Quaritch of Piccadilly and Wheldon of Long Acre) he began amassing a major library. He habitually combed the Paris bouquineries along the Seine, and used the services of the Berlin bookseller Friedlander und Soehne, who achieved success where no others had, tracking down a rare title Mathews had long sought, in Toowoomba, Queensland!

Tall, well-built, with boundless energy and enthusiasm, Mathews had an easy personality. At the outset he recognised his own ignorance and was always ready to learn from others and to acknowledge their help. The Director of the Department of Birds at the British Museum, Dr Richard Bowdler Sharpe, encouraged Mathews to publish his first list of the birds of Australia in The Emu (January 1908).

Sadly, before the first volume of The Birds of Australia was completed, Sharpe died. Soon after, Mathews approached another young Australian whom he had met at the British Museum, ornithologist Tom Iredale. Iredale became his friend and private secretary, beginning a long association. In collaboration, they published A Manual of the Birds of Australia (1921).

Watercolour of two Eutelipsitta chlorolepidota or Scaly-Breasted Lorikeet on a branch. Reproduced from plate 277 of The Birds of Australia by Gregory M. Mathews. Vol. VI (London: Witherby & Co., 1916–17)

(left) Eutelipsitta chlorolepidota or Scaly-Breasted Lorikeet
Reproduced from plate 277 of
The Birds of Australia
by Gregory M. Mathews. Vol. VI
(London: Witherby & Co., 1916–17)

 

(right) Rhipidura falbellifera or
White-Shafted Fantail
Reproduced from plate 400 of
The Birds of Australia
by Gregory M. Mathews. Vol. IX
(London: H.F. & G. Witherby,
1921–22)
Note: In The Birds of Australia, Mathews labelled plate 400 as Rhipidura alisteri

Watercolour of three Rhipidura falbellifera or White-Shafted Fantail. Reproduced from plate 400 of The Birds of Australia by Gregory M. Mathews. Vol. IX

Mathews went on to publish The Birds of Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar Quadrant (1928, with a Supplement in 1936). From 1912 until 1927 he also published his own periodical, The Austral Avian Record, and contributed numerous papers and lists to journals in Britain and Australia.

Well respected by his peers and colleagues, he was invited by the British Ornithologists’ Union to compile the Australian segment of their projected Systema Avium of the world. As well as overseeing his farm and carrying out his duties as ‘squire’, Mathews worked up to 16 hours a day on his beloved birds and books so that, in 1931, his Systema Avium Australasianarum was the first of the series to be issued. Mathews declared in his memoir:

Success is a matter of hard work, and not of luck. We make our own luck by following our own bent with devotion and singleness of purpose, and always honourably … Real riches are of the mind and spirit, not of the pocket.

Watercolour of 19 Australian birds by Lilian Medland (centre: Blue wren feeding a green grub to a baby cuckoo larger than itself). Reproduced from plate E of ‘Watercolours for Plates for an Unpublished Book on Australian Birds by Gregory M. Mathews’ (between 1930 and 1939)

Lilian Medland (1880–1955)
Australian birds (centre: Blue wren feeding a green grub to a baby cuckoo larger than itself)
Reproduced from plate E of ‘Watercolours for Plates for an Unpublished Book on Australian Birds by Gregory M. Mathews’ (between 1930 and 1939)
Sheet of 13 paintings: watercolour;
27.7 x 19 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an24430889

 

Hit by the worldwide recession in 1932, he was forced to sell his invaluable bird skin collection, which was later sold on to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. But he clung tenaciously to his precious library. Then in 1939, ‘as a thank offering for a successful career’, Mathews presented it in its entirety to the National Library of Australia—a magnificent gift.

Nothing if not thorough, he accompanied the collection to Canberra, where he worked with Library staff from 1940 to 1945, arranging and cataloguing some 5000 books and 29 boxes of manuscripts. In recognition of his great contribution to Australian ornithology, he was made a Companion of the Most Excellent  Order of the British Empire in 1939.

Unfortunately not all of Mathews’ prodigious work came to be published, but this disappointment seems relatively minor when compared to the misfortune suffered by Lilian Medland. She not only endured an illness which diminished her ability to enjoy to the full the birds she loved to paint, but she also experienced disappointment when four major publishing projects (for which she had completed almost 1400 images) were abandoned.

Lilian Marguerite Medland, born in England in 1880, was the daughter of an affluent naturalist and big game hunter. Spirited, adventurous and keenly interested in wildlife, as a girl she reared two lion cubs brought home from her father’s African travels. Later, as a trainee nurse at Guy’s Hospital, London, she met surgeon and ornithologist Charles Stonham, who recognised her artistic talent and invited her to illustrate his text, The Birds of the British Islands, published in parts between 1906 and 1911. Medland contributed 318 monochrome plates.

Then she was asked to illustrate a revised edition of William Yarrell’s A History of British Birds. She had been a private nurse at Woburn Abbey to the Duchess of Bedford, who commissioned several bird studies and introduced her to leading ornithological artists G.E. Lodge and Archibald Thorburn, who gave her useful tutelage. But although she painted 248 images, the book did not eventuate.

It was while sketching specimens at the British Museum that she met Tom Iredale, with whom she had much in common. When Medland and Iredale married in 1913, Iredale was working with Mathews on ‘The Handbook of the Birds of New Zealand’ and Medland was invited to do the illustrations. She completed 17 plates, depicting several species on each sheet, totalling some 109 birds, but again the work was never published.

Watercolour of 21 Australian parrots by Lilian Medland. Reproduced from plate A of ‘Watercolours for Plates for an Unpublished Book on Australian Birds by Gregory M. Mathews’ (between 1930 and 1939)

Lilian Medland (1880–1955)
Australian parrots
Reproduced from plate A of ‘Watercolours for Plates for an Unpublished Book on Australian Birds by Gregory M. Mathews’ (between 1930 and 1939)
sheet of 13 paintings: watercolour;
27.7 x 19 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an24430896

 

In 1923 the Iredale family, now numbering four, left England to live in Sydney, where Medland found a whole new world of birds to study and delight her artist’s eye. But sadly she never had the joy of hearing the songs and sounds of Australian birds; at the age of 27 she had contracted diphtheria and almost totally lost her hearing. Nevertheless, working happily at her easel on the verandah of their Queenscliff home and  overlooking the garden she loved, she completed 30 studies of Australian species for the Australian Museum. These were published, as postcards, in 1925. In 1961, six years after her death, her painting of the rare Providence Petrel featured on the two-shilling Norfolk Island stamp.

In the 1930s, Medland completed 53 plates depicting 883 species for another book on Australian birds by Mathews, and sent them to him in Britain. Again her work did not see publication, this time because of World War II. However, the plates returned to Australia as part of the Mathews Collection.

Each plate is a superb example of Medland’s art, containing from eight to 21 exquisite, finely detailed watercolour images. The accurate shades and delicate markings of plumage display both meticulous observation and professional skill. Beautifully proportioned and composed, the plates show related species of birds in characteristic attitudes, often with enchanting arrangements, such as the blue wren feeding a green grub to a baby cuckoo larger than itself. Medland carefully covered each board with protective tissue paper and annotated the back with an identification key. The unpublished watercolours of New Zealand birds, also in the collection, are equally breathtaking.

Her later work was published in two books written by Tom Iredale; Birds of Paradise and Bower Birds appeared in 1950. But although she saw proofs of the coloured plates, Birds of New Guinea was not published until 1957, two years after her death. The final work with Iredale, ‘Australasian Kingfishers’, for which she did 18 plates, was never published.

Nevertheless, she has left a legacy of artistry of scientific significance. And thanks to Gregory Mathews, part of this heritage is in the safekeeping of our National Library (some of Lilian Medland’s images are now reproduced and can be found in the Library Bookshop).

CHRISTOBEL MATTINGLEY has been a keen birdwatcher since childhood.  At the age of 10 her first published piece of writing, about a silvereye’s nest, appeared in the Children’s Pages of the nature magazine Wild Life. Soon afterwards, she was overawed to meet the famous ornithologist Gregory Mathews. Her latest work, King of the Wilderness, is the biography of Deny King, legendary Tasmanian bushman and bird lover

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