Elizabeth, Lady Gwillim ( Symonds; 21 April 1763 – 21 December 1807) was an English artist and naturalist. While living in Madras (now Chennai), India, from 1801 to 1807, Lady Gwillim painted a series of about 200 watercolours of Indian birds. Produced about 20 years before John James Audubon published his famous The Birds of America (1827–1839), Gwillim's work has been acclaimed for its accuracy and natural postures––she made her watercolours by observing living birds, sometimes in their natural environments.
Early life in England Elizabeth was born in the valley of Wye, Hereford, daughter of Esther and Thomas Symonds. She had four sisters: Frances, Ann (called Nancy), Mary Symonds (called Polly), and Hester (called Hetty), as well as a younger brother, Thomas, who died in infancy. Frances also died in infancy. Her father Thomas Symonds was a stonemason and was sworn a Freeman of the City of Hereford on 10 December 1753. He was also a draughtsman, architect, and monumental mason whose work in Hereford and Somerset was very well-regarded. In 1775 he was acting as clerk of works for Richard Payne Knight at Downton Castle. He was appointed surveyor of the Hereford Cathedral in 1777; following the collapse of the tower (a disaster which he had warned of) in 1786 he retired. Upon his death in March of 1791, his wife Esther continued his business until 1803. Esther Symonds died in 1806.
Elizabeth married Henry Gwillim (1759 – 22 September 1837) on 27 May 1784, in London at St. Bride’s Church on Fleet Street. Henry was a lawyer and judge whose family was also from Hereford. Information on their children is inconclusive: London archives document the burial of an infant on 13 January 1786, also named Elizabeth, who was born 31 March 1785 and baptized 20 June 1785 at St. Bride's. Other sources familiar with Gwillim’s life note another daughter named Ann, baptized 10 June 1787, and a son Henry, baptized 11 October 1789. These two children were born in Sarnesfield in Hereford and Henry's burial is recorded in nearby Kinnersley on 28 February 1790.Ancestry.com, England: Selected Deaths and Burials, 1538-1991 [database online]. Provo, UT, Texas: Ancestry.com, 2004 Elizabeth describes herself as childless in a letter to her sister Hetty written in 1806 from Madras,Elizabeth Gwillim to Hester James, no date (September–October 1806), British Library, India Office Records, Mss.Eur.C.240/4, ff. 329r-343v, f. 330r. and none of her preceding letters mention children.
In 1797, Henry became the Chief Justice of the Isle of Ely and then by 1801, he was appointed as one of the judges of the newly created Supreme Court of Madras, for which he was knighted. Elizabeth was escorted to court before their departure by the Bishop of Ely and Agneta Johnson Yorke, the widow of Charles Yorke, the former Chancellor, but Sir Henry did not receive his knighthood until after they had left England via Portsmouth, due to the illness of the king.Elizabeth Gwillim to Esther Symonds, [21 January] 1801. British Library, India Office Records, Mss.Eur.C.240/1 ff. 1r-3v.
Time in India Elizabeth Gwillim, her husband, her unmarried sister Mary Symonds, Sir Henry’s assistant Richard Clarke, another clerk, and two Indian servants embarked at Plymouth on the in 31 March 1801, arriving in Madras (now called Chennai) almost five months later, on 26 July. Their life there is thoroughly detailed in letters, now held in the British Library,Lady Elizabeth Gwillim Papers: 1801-1809, MSS Eur C240, India Office Records, British Library, London, England from the sisters to their mother, sister Hester, and friends back in England. The letters cover a wide variety of topics such as the climate, the landscape, the food, local social and religious customs, and much more. Scholars from many fields have read the Gwillim-Symonds letters for information on diverse subjects, such as their visits to women in the zenanas and the role of devadasi women in society. Most famously, however, Gwillim detailed the natural world around her in her letters and in the many bird paintings she created in her seven years in Madras.
Bird paintings Influence It is unclear where Gwillim’s inspiration to start painting the birds of Madras began, other than a clear and focused interest within herself. She and her sister Mary very likely received basic drawing instructions from their artistic father, and from their letters we know that they later trained under George Samuel, whom they often mention. Samuel painted primarily landscapes in both watercolours and oils, and his influence may be visible in Gwillim’s work.
The boom in illustrated natural history books in the mid-18th century surely made an impression. Gwillim names naturalist and author Thomas Bewick in a letter, telling her sister Hetty that she had seen an owl from Bewick’s A History of British Birds (volume one, Land Birds, 1797). She also requests that Hetty send her Bewick’s second volume on water birds, published in 1804. Other naturalists publishing on the native birds of England at this time include William Lewin (The Birds of Great Britain, with Their Eggs, Accurately Figured, 1789–1794), John Latham (ornithologist) (A general synopsis of birds 1781–1785), and Edward Donovan (The Natural History of British Birds, 1792–97). However, during this time of global exploration, Gwillim may also have seen birds from around the world before she herself departed England. Authors such as George Edwards (A Natural History of Uncommon Birds, 1743–51), Mark Catesby (Natural History of Caroline, Florida and the Bahama Islands, 1729–47), and Thomas Pennant (Indian Zoology, 1790) all contributed to the growing field of ornithological illustrations, and in her own series Gwillim painted birds that were also featured in each of these aforementioned earlier volumes.
Gwillim refers in one of her lettersElizabeth Gwillim to Hester James, n.d. [spring 1803], British Library India Office Records, Mss.Eur.C.240/2, ff. 167r-177v, on f. 176r. to the Leverian collection (referred to by her as Parkinson's [museum], then at the Blackfriars Rotunda), which displayed both stuffed birds, including a species of pheasant sent from India by Mary Impey, and paintings of birds. George Shaw's catalogue of the Leverian collection, featuring bird paintings by Sarah Stone, is another possible source of inspiration.
Artistic process Knowledge of Gwillim’s artistic process comes from letters, primarily a description from Mary: "Poor Betsy is never out of trouble for if you gets [sic] dead subjects to draw from they become offensive before she can finish the work to her mind, & when the birds are brought in alive they stare, or kick, or peck, or do some vile trick or other that frightens her out of her wits, sometimes she thinks the birds look sick, that is whenever they stand quiet & then in a great fit of tenderness she lets them fly before they are finished, least thier [sic] sufferings should be revenged upon her or their ghosts should come flying round her & flapping thier [sic] great wings, scare her to death. These are serious troubles I assure you. But we do all we can to remedy such evils & have now got a venerable looking old Moor man who catches a bird at a time he holds them in proper attitudes or feeds these miserable captives in a proper manner, for her poor concience [sic] sake."
Mary further details that in addition to the live birds which cause trouble as subjects, there are also dried skins of birds all around their house. Mary notes in a different letter that "her present employments keep her quite happy I almost wish you could see her in her glory; that is, with about twenty black men round her, a table full of books, the floor strewed with baskets of seeded branches of trees, and she herself standing in the midst with her cap snatched [?] to one side and talking away till she is quite fatigued."
Gwillim herself writes to her sister and mother that she is very much involved and absorbed in her work, often apologizing for writing so little as she is otherwise painting. She estimates having drawn about one hundred by 1805 and in the next two years "a great great great many birds" more. Gwillim’s health was never robust, but it seems only illnesses, such as heat exhaustion and later shingles, slowed her ambition.
Style There exists a great deal of variation within Gwillim’s paintings of birds, and thus a singular "style" is difficult to characterize. However there are different categories into which her paintings can be sorted and a few consistent traits visible in all. Of the 121 known paintings, held in the Blacker Wood Natural History collection at the McGill University Library, 56 have full backgrounds, 26 of the paintings have limited backgrounds, and 39 of the paintings have no background at all. The fully realized backgrounds contain features such as palm trees, distant mountains, and occasionally buildings such as temples. The limited backgrounds contain rocks or branches with some foliage contoured closely to the body of the bird. The paintings that have no backgrounds are perhaps unfinished, or may be the victims of Gwillim’s constant shortage of art supplies. The availability of paper, paints, and brushes was subject to the inconsistencies of ocean travel from England to Madras, and Gwillim herself notes that if she were to paint all her backgrounds in the style of her teacher George Samuel, she would run out of colours to do so even faster. Gwillim painted the birds themselves first, and the backgrounds second.
The most consistent trait in Gwillim's birds is her depiction and placement of feathers in such a way that shows an unprecedented understanding of avian anatomy. An aspect of ornithology was pterylography, the study of the patterns of distribution of the pterylae and apterylae particularly in young birds as these were morphological indicators of evolutionary relatedness. Gwillim accurately depicted the patterning and layering of wing and tail feathers in a seated bird, paying attention to multiple different types of feathers in specific locations and relations to their functions and to one another in the anatomy of the bird. Her colouring of the feathers is also very delicately and accurately rendered.
Botany Gwillim also took a keen interest in botany, detailed often in her letters, and was an active member of the global network of naturalists who sent seeds, plants, and illustrations to their friends and peers. Gwillim sent seeds to Lizzie Thoburn, daughter of Frank Thoburn, who ran a nursery of exotic plants in Brompton. Gwillim was also a serious collector for Reginald Whitely, who continued the nursery after Thoburn's death. She was cited in Curtis's Botanical Magazine, the preeminent publication on the topic at the time and praised by the editor John Sims (taxonomist) for her "accurate and graceful drawings." Both James Anderson (botanist), Physician General of the East India Company, and Johan Peter Rottler, a French Alsatian missionary and botanist living in Madras, became friends of hers.From Elizabeth Gwillim to her Sister Hester "Hetty" Symonds James, 24 August 1805. Lady Elizabeth Gwillim Papers: 1801-1809, MSS Eur C240, India Office Records, British Library, London, England Rottler named a plant after her: Gwillimia indica, later found to be an already described species of Magnolia, Magnolia coco. Gwillim painted the plant at Dr. Rottler’s request, and the drawing was sent to Dr. Smith. The drawing is now in the collection of the Linnean Society of London. In addition there are ten watercolour sketches of plants in the Blacker Wood collection but one can imagine that many more were once extant.