The Botanical Art of William T. Cooper

Description:


William T. Cooper was one of the world's most esteemed bird painters. In his paintings, birds nibble at plump red berries, they rest on twisted vines and branches covered with lichen, and they clutch forest fruits and leaves in their claws. These botanical details, the backdrops to his bird portraits, are the subject of this lavishly illustrated book written by his botanist wife, Wendy Cooper. 

For the bird lover, Bill's lush, full-colour paintings, many from private collections, are reproduced here, alongside Wendy's notes and Bill's diary entries about bird feeding habits. Wendy describes seeing King Parrots in the wet sclerophyll forest and rainforest at their home in Bungwahl, New South Wales, feeding on the juicy black berries of the Narrow-leaved Palm Lily (Cordyline stricta). The parrots were extracting the seeds and dropping the flesh. Over the course of a decade, Bill observed activity around an Umbrella Tree in their garden: 'Watched a female coloured riflebird feeding on the flowers of a Schefflera on the driveway. I'm convinced it was taking nectar as they do on the Thunbergia in the garden. It went from open flower to open flower'. For the nature lover, Wendy has included detailed botanical descriptions of each plant and personal notes about where a particular specimen was found. She takes the reader from rainforest to dry country, from swamps and beach forest to the jungles north of Australia. We learn that Maiden's Blush trees are forest giants with wonderful high-arching plank buttresses; that Bill had to shoot down a small stem from high up in the forest canopy to capture a fruit specimen; an