John Gerard Keulemans Biography

John Gerard Keulemans, born Johannes Gerardus Keulemans (1842-1912), was a Dutch bird and animal illustrator. For most of his life he lived and worked in England, illustrating many of the best-known ornithology books of the nineteenth century.

Keulemans was born in Rotterdam. As a young man he collected animal specimens for museums such as the Natural History Museum in Leiden, whose director, Hermann Schlegel, encouraged Keulemans and sent him on the 1864 expedition to West Africa. In 1869, he was persuaded by Richard Bowdler Sharpe to illustrate his Monograph of the Alcedinidae, or Family of Kingfishers (1868-1871) and to move to England, where he lived for the rest of his life. He was married twice and had eight children by his first wife and seven children by his second wife. Only nine of his children reached adulthood. He also wrote topics on spirituality, and claimed he had a premonition at the moment of death of one of his sons. He died in Ilford, Essex (now part of Greater London) and is buried in Buckingham Road cemetery, Ilford, in an unmarked grave.

Keulemans regularly provided illustrations for The Ibis and The Proceedings of the Zoological Society. He illustrated many important bird books, including Buller's A History of the Birds of New Zealand (1873, 1888), William Vincent Legge's History of the Birds of Ceylon (1880), Daniel Giraud Elliot's Monograph of the Bucerotidae (hornbills) (1887–1892), Henry Seebohm's Monograph of the Turdidae (thrushes) (1902), Osbert Salvin's Biologia Centrali-Americana (1879-1904), Edgar Leopold Layard's Birds of South Africa (1887) and Henry Eeles Dresser's History of the Birds of Europe (1871-1896), and a single illustration in The Journal of the Linnean Society.

One of his last great achievements was his contribution of over one hundred plates for Frederick Du Cane Godman's Monograph of the Petrels (1907-1910). He also spent some time collecting birds in Cape Verde and West Africa.

The only significant biography of Keulemans is by Jan Coldewey and Tony Keulemans, Feathers to Brush, a book that includes a bibliography of the artist's publications, a genealogical tree and appendices detailing his spiritualism, with a sample of his financial correspondence. Also of note is a contemporary obituary of Keulemans in the journal British Birds (1912). Tony Keulemans later wrote Beyond the Grave, which tells the story of a remarkable discovery of a painting John Gerrard had made of his own gravestone. And finally, Tony Keulemans wrote an errata list for Feathers to Brush, which includes additional literature references and new genealogical findings.

Keulemans's work is characterised by its consistency, showing little change over the course of his career, and focused to an extraordinary degree on the rendering of fine detail. These generalisations have also proven to be the basis for unjustified criticism of his work, since the nature of scientific illustration places a premium on consistency. Aside from this, several critics have rightly placed Keulemans above his contemporaries; his ability to create accurate and vivid representations of birds gave him prominence in his field.

Keulemans was prodigious in his output - he was commissioned to paint pictures of birds extensively throughout his career, and his prints were published continuously from 1867 to 1911. Keulemans' first prints appeared in two books by Francois Pollen, Contributions to l'histoire naturelle des Lemuriens (1867) and Een blik in Madagascar (1867). Some appeared after his death until 1915 (Mathews, Birds of Australia); he had rendered the images on stone well before the publication of these works. A calculation of his total output gives about 4,000-5,000 published illustrations. The vast majority of these were vignettes published within octavo-size books and publications, and a great number of his works also appeared in quarto (Dresser/Europe) and in folio (Seebohm/Turdidae and DuCane Godman/Petrels). While the subject of his illustrations was almost entirely avian, he was also commissioned to create portraits of mammals, insects, and shells.

Keulemans painted remarkable pictures of extinct birds, including Walter Rothschild's Avifauna of Laysan, Extinct Birds (1907). Examples in the American Museum of Natural History in New York include the Choiseul crested pigeon, Kangaroo Island emu, huia, Lyall's wren, Hawaii oo, Hawaii mamo, Oahu oo, Guadalupe petrel, and the laughing owl.

The only work that was not only illustrated but also written by Keulemans, was Onze Vogels in Huis en Tuin (Our birds in home and garden). It was a three volume work in Dutch that appeared between 1869 and 1876.

In this work Keulemans does write about a number of native birds, but he also describes (and paints) a number of cagebirds and aviary birds.