Arthur Singer, one of America's best known
bird painters, was born in 1917 in New York City. His fascination
with wildlife began early, with regular visits to the Bronx
Zoo. By his mid-teens, Singer had already created a substantial
body of early work, compositions drawn from first-hand observations
of big game animals and birds at the zoo. His interest in
wildlife art led him directly to the work of Audobon and
Fuertes as well as a vision of what he later hoped to accomplish.
After a formal art education at the Cooper Union and 4 years
of service in the war, he settled into family life and a
job as an art director, while pursuing his dream of being
a wildlife artist. After the set of prints State Birds comissioned
for the American Home Magazine had achieved enormous success,
Singer was offered several contracts to illustrate books
on birds. The year was 1958 and Singer became a full-time
bird painter.
Mountain
Bluebirds, Number 2 of a series
of paintings
by Arthur Singer for American Home Magazine, 1956.
Realization of a Dream
During the late 1950's, Singer began a project with Robert
Porter Allen entitled the Giant Book of Birds. The Western
Publishing Co. saw the high quality of the illustrations
and decided to expand the idea into a serious volume to be
known as Birds of the World. Written
by Oliver Austin, the volume was a critical success and sold
hundreds of thousands of copies (it was translated into eight
languages.)
With the success of Birds of the World many projects
followed and the 1960's saw Arthur Singer's reputation solidly
established in the first rank of the world's finest
bird artists. His guide Birds of North America (Bruun,
Robbins
& Singer) was the first real challenge to the Peterson
Field Guides and has remained a best seller ever since. With
over 6 million sold since first publication, Birds of North
America is still regarded as his best known work. Families
of Birds (Austin & Singer), the field guide Birds
of Europe, (Bruun & Singer) Zoo
Animals and the large volume of Birds
of Europe were also published during the 1960's.
Arthur Singer presents his painting of a
Goshawk to Prince Philip at a reception
in London, England 1972.
The decade of the 1970's saw the artist turn his attention
increasingly toward painting. During this period Singer painted
a number of oil and gouache paintings as well as over twenty
prints for Frame House Gallery. His passion for travel,
especially to wild areas took him to Africa, South & Central
America, the Mid East and Europe, always in the pursuit of
seeing new species in their habitat. The Seventies also saw
the publications of Birds of the West Indies (Bond,
Eckleberry, Singer), The Life of the Hummingbird (Skutch,
Singer), Cats (Fitch, Singer) and
the never-published Birds of the Ocean,
and Birds of the Seven Continents.
As he devoted more of his attentions to painting, SInger
took on fewer publishing projects and after Greenland
Fauna and the book State Birds,
his time was almost entirely given over to easel painting.
Exhibits in 1982 and 1984 at the Hammer Gallery were very
successful. Among colleagues in attendance at the Hammer
exhibits were his friends Don Eckleberry, Guy Coheleach,
Roger Tory Peterson, Al Gilbert, Guy Tudor, Dean Amadon and
John Bull, a Who's Who of bird artists and ornithologists.
Arthur doing field work, 1978
Birds & Flowers of the Fifty States
Over his carreer, Arthur Singer illustrated more than 20
books
& guides, several series of prints, porcelain plates,
the hugely successful Postal offering Birds & Flowers
of the Fifty States (selling over 500 million sets of 50
stamps) as well as numerous oil and watercolor paintings.
He had earned an international reputation and the Leigh Yawkey
Woodson's Master Bird Painter award in 1981, the Audobon
Society's Hal Borland Award in 1985 and Cooper Union's first
Augustus St. Gaudins medal for lifetime achievement. Since
his death in 1990 there have been six retrospective exhibits,
including a major retrospective at the Leigh Yawkey Woodsen
Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin.
