Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, by Joseph Bartholomew Kidd, n.d.
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Rose-Breasted Grosbeak

Joseph Bartholomew Kidd (Scottish, born Edinburgh, Scotland ca. 1808-died Greenwich, England 1889)

n.d.

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Paintings
Dimensions
26 1/4 x 20 3/4 in. (66.8 x 52.7 cm)
Museum
Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
Credit line
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U. S. National Museum
Rights
CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed

View at the Smithsonian Institution

About this work

Around 1830, John James Audubon commissioned the Scottish artist Joseph Bartholomew Kidd to copy many of his paintings of birds. Audubon hoped to use these paintings in a natural history gallery that would tour England. The project was never completed, however, in part because Kidd took too long to finish the work. In this painting, Kidd directly copied the four birds on a branch from the original illustration, then added a landscape to the background to create an “embellished” painting for Audubon’s proposed exhibition.