The Sky Simulated by Red Flamingoes, c.1905–1909

The print

Printed by theprintspace, the East London fine-art lab trusted by artists, galleries and museums. Each print is made to order on Hahnemühle German Etching, a heavyweight 310gsm mould-made paper with a slightly warm white tone and a soft, mottled texture, using archival pigment inks made to last for generations.

German Etching suits this study especially well. Its warm tone and textured surface hold the burning oranges and deep purples richly, with the feel of paint rather than photograph.

A note on the surface: Thayer painted these studies quickly and surely, and every brushmark, drag and scratch of the original is reproduced faithfully. Up close they read almost as abstracts; from across a room the birds come and go, which was exactly his point.

Sizes available:

40×40cm, 16×16″, fine art print, open edition
50×50cm, 20×20″, fine art print, open edition
70×70cm, 28×28″, fine art print, open edition

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The story

In 1909, the painter Abbott Handerson Thayer and his son Gerald published Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, arguing that an animal’s colouring, however eye-catching, works to hide it. Even bright pink flamingoes, they said, would vanish against a sky of the same colour at sunrise or sunset.

This study makes that argument in paint. As its title says, the birds’ colouring stands in for the sky itself.

Not everyone was convinced. Theodore Roosevelt called the theory ludicrous and wrote a 112-page article against it; Thayer repeatedly invited him to his home in New Hampshire to see for himself, but Roosevelt never went. Part of Thayer’s idea, countershading, proved right and is still known as Thayer’s law. The studies he painted for the book are now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.