Edward Bird

Edward Bird
Edward Bird by Edward Villiers Rippingille, 1817
Born	1772 Wolverhampton
Died	2 November 1819
Nationality	English
Known for	Genre painting, History painting

Edward Bird RA (1772 – 2 November 1819) was an English genre painter who spent most of his working life in Bristol, where the Bristol School of artists formed around him. He enjoyed a few years of popularity in London, where he challenged the dominance of Sir David Wilkie in the genre painting field, before moving on to history painting, specialising in battle scenes.

Bird was born in Wolverhampton, the son of a carpenter. He received no formal artistic training, but developed his skills through apprenticeship as a japanning artist painting tea trays. In 1794 he moved to Bristol, where he married Martha Dodrell and pursued a career in artistic commissions: portraiture, book illustrations, and church painting.

At Bristol, Bird became the centre of an informal group which included other artists such as Edward Villiers Rippingille and Nathan Cooper Branwhite, and which developed into the Bristol School. Initially amateur artists dominated the group, and Bird's closest friends included the amateurs John King, who was also Bird's doctor, and George Cumberland. Cumberland, who moved to Bristol in 1807, became godfather to Bird's son. He had a large art collection from which he would lend items for Bird to study.

The group conducted evening sketching meetings and sketching excursions to scenic locations around Bristol.Landscape with Cottage was probably painted on one of these trips. However, Bird painted landscapes relatively infrequently and he would often accompany the excursions without joining in the sketching. Bird's greatest influence on the Bristol artists was in the naturalistic style and fresh colours of his genre painting, especially so in the case of Rippingille, who worked closely with him. In 1814 they both exhibited works at the Royal Academy with the same subject, The Cheat Detected.Francis Danby, who moved to Bristol from Ireland in 1813 and was to succeed Bird as a leader of the Bristol School, was also influenced by Bird's genre style.