Allan Brooks (1869 – 1946)

Major Allan Cyril Brooks died when I was in my infancy, but it was his published artwork, especially that done in the previous decade and a half, that first made in indelibly deep impression on me, long before I knew anything about the artist, or very much about birds or art. 

After a few false starts Brooks developed a strong and very distinctive, cursive signature that appeared in the lower corner of each painting, in flowing script that looked spontaneous, and yet about the only difference in each signature was the color and the presence or absence of a date.  It was his work that illustrated the paper calendars I collected in my pre-teens, that illustrated most of the Audubon bird cards I collected as a kid, and that illustrated most of the full-page features in the Toronto Telegram’s Weekend Magazine.  Small paintings of his were printed in P.A. Taverner’s much cherished book, Birds of Canada, first published in 1934. 

But my greatest discovery of that time in my youthful life was the two-volume set of The National Geographic Book of Birds, first published in 1939, and filled with many examples of what I call “composite paintings”, vignette paintings of several species, each with a touch of natural habitat around it, some blending into others, all of which bore that distinctive Allan Brooks signature, plus some exquisite paintings of an individual species, plus a few small paintings of warblers done by the other most influential artist of my childhood, Louis Agassiz Fuertes.  Someone had snipped out one or two pages of the warblers, defacing the book and frustrating me as I wondered what gems I was missing.

The bird and other nature books in the children’s section of the local library held no real interest for me, and my children’s library card did not allow me to take books on birds and nature that did interest me, in the adult section. No problem: my parents could and did take out whatever I wanted.  A book could only be borrowed for two weeks at a time and so I would borrow volume one of The National Geographic Book of Birds on my mom’s card, keep it two weeks, return it and borrow volume two, return it and take out volume one, and so on, so that one or the other volume was with me since we could not afford to buy the books, themselves.  Rarely did my plan falter when someone borrowed the volume whose turn it was for me to have.  And I assure you that I now have, and treasure, both volumes, all color plates intact. 

Slowly I learned who Brooks was, met people who had known him, and took some form of youthful patriotic pride in learning that although he had been born in India, he had lived most of his life in Canada, and counted himself to be a Canadian. Once, while talking to my mentor, T. M. Shortt, who, if I have to quantify bird artists, I’d judge to have been the best that Canada ever produced, he said to me, “You know, Barry, Brooks wasn’t really that much of an artist.” 

I knew what he meant; Brooks was, as Wikipedia now says of him, more “impressionistic” than would be true of so many bird artists who are now considered to be among “the best”.  I remember reading an assessment of Brooks by American bird artist and contemporary, George M. Sutton, complaining that Brooks used almost the same pose, or at most a variant of it, for nearly every bird of every species.

But therein, in my own opinion, lies Brooks’ genius, as well as his limitation. 

But first a bit about the man.  He never had, during his lifetime, the opportunities that came the way of his friend, but also his competitor, Louis Agassiz Fuertes.  Brooks was a hunter and trapper who inevitably moved into the field of collecting museum quality specimens, commercially.  His father, William Edwin Brooks had studied birds in India but moved Allan to Canada by way of schooling in England, then to Ontario, where the family took up farming, and finally to British Columbia, which would be Allan’s home base thereafter, except for some time spent in the U.S.  Allan, whose hunting prowess contributed to him being a skilled sharp-shooter, distinguished himself with the 7th Canadian Infantry Battalion in the first world war by his courage under fire and ahead of enemy lines. He was awarded for his skill as a sniper, individually picking off twenty enemy combatants in two intense days of combat, but suffering partial hearing loss from an explosion that robbed him (as age has now robbed me) of hearing the higher pitches of bird song. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in response to his military record and left the military with the rank of Major. 

Toronto ornithologist James L. Baillie told me Brooks, whom he had known, was a strong personality, very firm in his beliefs and opinionated.  Brooks believed that certain wildlife species, like hawks, had to be controlled to protect more desirable species, like game birds.  It was a mindset that was popular in that era (strongly advocated by Jack Miner, then by far the most famous of Canadian “naturalists” and a man whose views were strongly adversative to my own), indeed, still lingering into the present, now the antithesis of my own views and much of my professional activity, but that’s another story.  And I knew none of that in childhood nor would it, or does it, change the esteem I hold for his paintings.

When I was about twelve years old, I was invited to attend the annual meeting of the Hamilton Nature Club, to show some of my own artwork. Present were some mammal specimens collected by Brooks and loaned by the National Museum, in Ottawa. Also shipped to the event was a pair of identical boxes, direct from the National Audubon Society.  Having heard of my passion for Brooks’ art, and with a knowing grin, the president of the Hamilton Nature Club made a strange request of me, a kid.  “Barry, do you mind unpacking those boxes for us?” 

I opened the tops and in each one was a rectangle of blond wood, divided into 18 parts, less, as I recall, than an inch wide.  I was looking at the tops of identical picture frames, and I was about to experience one of the great thrills of my life.  “Take them out.” 

I did, and each was indeed a frame, narrow wood, of a painting of a bird of prey by Allan Brooks, the first original bird painting by any of my bird artist heroes I had ever seen, and each was, to my young eyes, a gem of absolute perfection, each one better than the last, and showing virtually every species of bird of prey then known to have appeared in North America.  They were not large paintings, all the same size, about 12 by 9 inches as I recall, but I didn’t measure them, and identically framed and matted.  I just stared at them in utter amazement, caught up in the wonder of them all.  They were a commissioned series of paintings done to illustrate a book (which, of course, I now own) called The Hawks of North America, by John Bichard May, and published in 1935 by the National Association of Audubon Societies.  Ironically, perhaps, given Brooks’ own views, the book had been part of an overall effort to promote the protection of birds of prey, then heavily persecuted because of the ecologically naïve fear that they were harmful to populations of more “valuable” wildlife such as gamebirds and songbirds.  In fact, in the painting of the Sharp-shinned Hawk, Brooks had (I learned, decades later) been told to eliminate a bird victim of one of the hawks, which explains why the young Sharp-shinned Hawk is on the ground looking at – nothing.

I explain elsewhere why I feel the dichotomies separating such designations as “illustration”, “art”, and “fine art” are essentially too subjective to have any real value in categorizing more or less representational art.  But it is our natural tendency to compartmentalize and as a youngster I grappled with the concepts, I think, in part, because I was feasting on the fruits of what has been called the golden age of illustration, usually pegged at lasting from about the last quarter of the 19th century through the first two or three decades of the 20th, declining but not gone by the time I was enthusiastically seeking magazine and book illustrations.  Indeed, it could be argued, if one cares, that the golden age of illustration spawned, thus was followed by, a sort of golden age of nature illustration, coincident with the need for it. I was happy both to categorize Brooks as an illustrator and to want nothing more for myself but to be the same, some day.

Brooks’ strength, in my opinion, was that he developed a style that allowed him to work deftly and impressionistically in a way that produced images that were esthetically pleasing as a result of his virtuoso command of curvaceous form and beautifully complimentary color, at a cost, as alluded to in Sutton’s criticism, to diversity and hard-core ornithological accuracy. But more than that, for me, was how he could, with amazing deftness and seemingly economy of effort, evoke a sense of the essence of place, of habitat, and do so with amazing consistency, painting after painting.  What I saw in one of the 36 paintings of raptorial birds, I saw in them all, as I did in all his work past the early stages that so hint at what was to come.

An Allan Brooks painting tends to show one or more birds in perfect plumage.  The feathers are loose, but not “fluffed” as there are no breaks showing in the outlines, no feather out of place, the bird looking solidly plump and healthy.  Since every feather is neatly in place, the feather tracts are in perfect alignment.  Brooks’ paintings were, for me, an early lesson in avian topography. The birds are sitting quietly, or perhaps singing or, at most eating food or clutching prey, but virtually never stretching or preening (a major component of any bird’s time budget) or bathing or squabbling and rarely is there a nest.  However, breeding displays that show otherwise hidden features are sometimes portrayed.

The bird is normally arranged so that the viewer gets to see the maximum amount of identifying color patterns, flying birds usually in the background, posed to show wing patterns.  Males in breeding plumage are almost invariably shown above, individuals in female or immature plumage below, and often even behind, unless, of course, the female is the more colorful, as is true of Belted Kingfishers and phalaropes, in which case she takes the prominent position.  Newly hatched young birds are rarely shown, which is unfortunate because when they do appear they are beautifully well done with charming results.  Most importantly, to my eye, are the curves and counter-curves that outline the birds and their feather tracts, all smooth and rounded. While there is detail, it is never overdone, often more implied than actual and showing the bird close to how it would look to the naked eye, a short distance away.  No leaf or branch or reed eclipses any visually significant part of the bird. He often drew (as do I) what I call the ”heroic pose” of the bird, side view, head usually slightly tilted upward, at times with one foot more or less straight down, the other at an angle.

Each scene is bathed in a diffuse light, never harsh sunlight, and images are never strongly backlit nor illuminated from the side or below. Even a Great Horned Owl by moonlight is clearly and uniformly illuminated.

Brooks developed almost a visual shorthand for the “accoutrements” around the bird, laying down matte areas of softly blended tones against which sharp highlights and gentle shadows, often in browns and mauves, created wonderful sense of form and texture.  Lichens, pine cones, dead leaves on the forest floor, reeds, ochre cattails, curving branches, evergreen needles, sand, ancient rocks – all rendered in a distinctive style, over and over.  Distant backgrounds invariable evoke a sense of environment, at most lightly touched by human action – a fence there, or a distant house or barn – with far off mountains, rivers, forests, fields, ponds or whatever shown with minimal brushwork and maximum effectiveness. 

So distinctive were his skies, often cloudy and toned in softest shades of grey, suggestive of warm textures, but at times with glowing cloud edges, that my mother and I would often comment that we were under a Brooks sky, especially in winter.  When I made my first trip to B.C., in December, 1964, I saw many such skies and can see how they influenced Brooks. More interestingly, I met F. C. MacNaughton, an older naturalist who, as a boy, had known Brooks and had asked how the skies were done. Brooks took a panel with watercolor paper stretched on it (presumably fastened with tape around the edges; when wet the paper expands and buckles, but it dries to a flat, smooth surface – a process called stretching), added watercolor pigment, took it over to the faucet and poured water over it, blending the colors into a classic Brooks sky.  Brooks apparently painted on tinted paper and used Chinese white to create a sort of gouache, opaque effect, although his early work was more purely watercolor on white paper. The figures, especially the dominate ones, were often at right angles to the compositional flow of the immediate background.

Brooks must have worked rapidly, so huge was his output, and criticisms abound. His plant life was often perfunctory at best, proportions between identifiable plant species and the subject often skewed, and of course there was that repetitive similarity.  Remembering that Brooks and others of his era toiled before there was the plethora of high-speed photographic images of flying birds, Brooks’ birds in flight often looked small winged and unconvincing.  Even the proportions of his birds could be flawed, feet of ducks perhaps a little too large, tails of songbirds maybe too short, although the way in which he made the toes of songbirds grip perches was very suggestive of what one sees in life.  His pen and ink studies are exquisite little masterpieces, in my eyes, with a few lines to suggest the appropriate environment around an elegantly and often plumply curvaceous bird.

He was my first and most powerful influence and to this day I sometimes catch myself paying homage to him with colors and composition.  I don’t paint like Brooks, nor do I wish to.  And I have the advantage of access to a far wider range of options and references than he ever had. But I remain in awe of what he accomplished, his amazing level of productivity and the sheer style he brought to his works.  I find myself excited by any discovery of a reproduction of a hitherto unknown painting, and since most (but not all) of his paintings were of North American species, when I view a species and landscape from another land, I often find myself thinking, “I wonder how Brooks would have handled that?”  He would, whatever else, have created a beautiful illustration evoking the species and its place in the environment.