{"@context":"http:\/\/iiif.io\/api\/presentation\/3\/context.json","id":"https:\/\/gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk\/api\/iiif\/O47049\/manifest.json","type":"Manifest","label":{"none":["Two robins and their nest amongst foliage "]},"summary":{"none":["D.2026.XX.5"]},"navDate":"1862-01-01","requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["<a href=\"https:\/\/courtauld.ac.uk\/\">The Courtauld Institute of Art<\/a>"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https:\/\/courtauld.ac.uk\/","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["The Courtauld Institute of Art"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https:\/\/gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk\/home","type":"Text","label":{"en":["The Courtauld Gallery Collection Online"]},"format":"text\/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https:\/\/gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk\/static\/img\/col_courtauld_cms\/The_Courtauld_logo.png","type":"Image","format":"image\/png","height":122,"width":1004}]}],"rendering":[{"id":"https:\/\/gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk\/object-d-2026-xx-5","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Full record view"]},"format":"text\/html"}],"metadata":[{"label":{"none":["Title"]},"value":{"none":["Two robins and their nest amongst foliage "]}},{"label":{"none":["Maker"]},"value":{"none":[" Augusta Innes Withers"]}},{"label":{"none":["Production date"]},"value":{"none":["1862"]}},{"label":{"none":["Medium"]},"value":{"none":["Watercolour over graphite heightened with touches of opaque watercolour, gum arabic and scratching out, on wove paper"]}},{"label":{"none":["Accession number"]},"value":{"none":["D.2026.XX.5"]}},{"label":{"none":["Dimensions"]},"value":{"none":["Height: 46.4 cm<br>Width: 35 cm"]}},{"label":{"none":["Object type"]},"value":{"none":["Drawings"]}},{"label":{"none":["Institution"]},"value":{"none":["The Courtauld Institute of Art"]}},{"label":{"none":["Credit"]},"value":{"none":["Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust), purchase, 2026"]}},{"label":{"none":["Label text"]},"value":{"none":["Augusta Innes Withers enjoyed a long and successful career as a natural history illustrator and flower and bird painter. Widely admired during her lifetime for her meticulously detailed and botanically accurate work, she exhibited prolifically, at the Royal Academy (1829-1846), the Royal Society of British Artists (1832-1865) and the New Watercolour Society. One of the earliest members of the Society of Women Artists, she exhibited 43 works with them between 1857-1875. She was appointed flower painter to Queen Adelaide in 1833 and flower and fruit painter to Queen Victoria in 1864, as well as being a painter to the Royal Horticultural Society.<br><br>Withers’s work falls into two categories: the botanical illustrations she contributed to leading periodicals such as <i>The Botanist<\/i>, the <i>Pomological Magazine<\/i> and <i>Curtis’s Botanical Magazine<\/i> and books such as Robert Thompson’s <i>The Gardener’s Assistant<\/i> (1859) and (in collaboration with Sarah Drake) James Bateman’s<i> Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala<\/i> (1837-1843), and highly imaginative watercolour compositions that combine elements of landscape and still life with the painstaking depiction of flowers and birds. This watercolour is a particularly vivid and ambitious example of the latter type of work, depicting a close-up view of two robins – one half-hidden within its nest – on a hillside overgrown with ivy, hart’s-tongue and buckler ferns and studded with flints (one of which, at centre, has been freshly broken to reveal its unweathered colouration and patterning). The vibrant colour – heightened with the judicious use of gum arabic – and inventive composition evoke a slice of landscape teeming with life and show Withers at her best. The fusion of scientific exactitude and imagination places her work within a distinguished lineage of female botanical artists like Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) and Barbara Regina Dietzsch (1706-1783), whilst the subject matter also invites comparison with her contemporary William Henry Hunt (1790-1864) and also with Mary Moser (1744-1819), one of the two female founding members of the Royal Academy who was renowned for her flower painting.<br>"]}},{"label":{"none":["License"]},"value":{"none":["<a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc\/4.0\/\">BY-NC 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0<\/a>"]}}],"items":[{"id":"https:\/\/gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk\/api\/iiif\/O47049\/canvas\/1","type":"Canvas","label":{"none":["D.2026.XX.5"]},"height":7200,"width":5339,"format":"image\/jpeg","items":[{"id":"https:\/\/gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk\/api\/iiif\/O47049\/canvas\/1\/page","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https:\/\/gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk\/api\/iiif\/O47049\/canvas\/1\/page\/annotation","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","target":"https:\/\/gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk\/api\/iiif\/O47049\/canvas\/1","body":{"id":"https:\/\/gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk\/iiif\/3\/219895\/full\/max\/0\/default.jpg","type":"Image","format":"image\/jpeg","height":7200,"width":5339}}]}]}]}