Red-Billed Gull & Black-Billed Gull

John Gerrard Keulemans was born in Rotterdam in 1842. The son of a fashionable military tailor, he rejected continuing the family line of work to pursue the less secure life of an artist and naturalist. Keulemans had been fascinated by the natural world from a young age, but his key interest lay in ornithology, and he began his career providing taxidermied specimens to the State Museum of Natural History at Leiden. He gradually became recognised for his artistic dedication and reliability for scientific accuracy and came under the guidance of Professor Hermann Schlegal, who instructed Keulemans in lithography, a skill which was to be a valuable asset in his later career.

In 1869 Keulemans moved to London, then the centre of ornithological research, where he produced work as a freelance illustrator for journals and publications, working alone or in collaboration with other artists. He claimed that by the time he was fifty he had drawn over 20,000 species of birds. From the 1870s to the close of the century, he held the reputation of being the finest Victorian ornithological illustrator.

Shortly after his arrival in London, Keulemans’ talents came to the attention of Walter Buller, who had begun work on The History of the Birds of New Zealand. Buller was supported in this enterprise by James Hector, Director of the Colonial Museum, who had secured £300 from the New Zealand Government to produce the publication, noting that ‘…the importance of such a work has been advocated by Gould, Newton, Solate and other eminent naturalists … who urge that a work of this description should be completed and in the hands of the colonists without delay, as the native birds are becoming rapidly extinct’. In exchange for his support, the Colonial Museum received Buller’s collection of skins, upon which his descriptions had been based.

It was skins such as these that served as the basis for Keulemans’ illustrations. Keulemans never travelled to New Zealand, but made his observations from specimens or skins, or occasionally, perhaps, birds that had survived the journey and were alive in London. Keulemans made his initial sketches in pencil, then watercolour. These were reviewed by Buller, before being made into black and white lithographs and coloured by hand.

Red-Billed Gull & Black-Billed Gull is a watercolour commissioned by Buller from Keulemans as the basis for the chromolithograph that would illustrate the second edition of The history of the birds of New Zealand, published in 1888. The black-billed gull was also known as Buller’s gull, and its scientific name, Larus bulleri acknowledges his contribution to describing this species. This may be the reason this painting was held in the family until its sale at auction in 2013. While gulls are not regarded as the most ‘exotic’ of New Zealand’s indigenous birds, more commonly seen as pests by many for disturbing seaside picnics, the black-billed gull has the unenviable status of being the most threatened gull species in the world.

In contrast to the illustration produced for the 1873 edition of A History of the Birds of New Zealand, which pictures a pair of gulls on land, this watercolour pictures the gulls in the water. Keulemans was more ambitious in his illustrations for the 1888 edition, attempting to picture the birds within a more extensive natural setting. There are delightful details including the flock of seagulls swirling in the background and the bubbles breaking the surface of the water, suggesting the red-billed bull has just returned from the depths of the ocean, fish proudly caught in its mouth.

Throughout his career, Keulemans was aware of the paradox posed by his profession. Although he boasted completing some 20,000 drawings of birds, he concluded, ‘…there would be about a dozen I am happy with – this I repeat – most birds are not suitable to be printed in colour, that is to say, that you cannot draw them true to life and at the same time perfectly in harmony with the rules of painting. You cannot reproduce them like that’.

Rebecca Rice, 2021