Robert Bruce Horsfall (1869 – 1948)

As a child, I was exposed to poor reproductions of what I now know were not his best works, and that his best works were not necessarily birds. An American wildlife artist and illustrator, what influenced me in a negative way was how large he made his name when he signed his paintings.  I often try to make my own signature as unobtrusive as possible, to the point I’ve had buyers thinking I had not signed their purchase.  There was a “clunkiness” to his birds, that made them look, in my then youthful eyes, a little more like substandard taxidermy mounts than real birds. But he did influence me in the sense that his work was a benchmark against which I could measure my own progress, with, unlike the case of several artists named here, a chance of reaching and surpassing it.  I know now that he did something I greatly admire, and that was he tried a lot of different ideas, treatments, subjects and so on, a genuine artist more respected by me now than when I was young, and less informed about his range.  Only in researching these commentaries, for example, did I learn that he did a lot of paleo art, a difficult and fascinating field. He portrayed many exotic species, including non-avian fauna, and I think his mammals are often quite excellent, but I didn’t know about any of those artistic efforts by Horsfall when I was a kid, seeking my own artistic paths.