George Miksch Sutton (1898 – 1982)

Literally a student of Louis Agassiz Fuertes, who directly tutored him, Sutton, while adept with pen and ink, is most noted for his classic watercolours, always avoiding opaque gouache in favor of classic translucent pigments. As I matured through my childhood, teens, and twenties I admired him most for his studies direct from living or freshly shot birds. I think of him as much a field ornithologist as artist, and his style, using a large brush filled with pigment, painting up to the edge of the various figures in the painting, limited the appearance of his work. He avoided strong highlights or shadows, backlighting or interesting behavior, but did an excellent job of including botanically accurate plants native to the main subject’s habitat. He loved to paint directly from nature, and he also had, as do I, a propensity to portray nestlings and fledglings – baby birds. One odd feature of his work that always bothered me was that he seemed to make the feet of many of his birds too small or thin, but in balance he was certainly a superior bird artist and illustrator whose paintings could not help but influence my own efforts. I had the pleasure of meeting him once, introduced to him by T.M. Shortt, a golden moment in my young life.