Burke, Edgar

"Turnstone"

Watercolor on paper, signed "Edgar Burke" lower right and dated July 27th 1911 in pencil, upper right title in pencil "Turnstone (AS.) Great South Beach, L.I. July 26th 1911". Image 8 x 6-1/2 inches, Great South Beach, Long Island, N.Y.: 1911. Glazed and framed.

A fine early watercolor drawing of the Turnstone, an American shore bird, by sportsman, artist and physician Edgar Burke Edgar Burke, MD (1889-1950) successfully combined the vocation of medicine (he was a member of the American College of Physicians and Surgeons) and the avocation of sport. He was an enthusiastic wildfowler and upland gunner, an expert angler and fly tier (he designed the flies "Doctor Burke" and "Family Secret") and was interested in pigeon racing and cock fighting (it was he, in the Jersey City cock-fights of the 1930s, who sewed up the wounds of the injured birds). He was also a celebrated sporting artist, illustrating two Derrydale Press classics, Feathered Game (1929) and Upland Game Bird Shooting in America (1930), and producing front cover vignettes for seven more, including Grouse Feathers, and De Shootinest Gent'man. He was, notes Siegel, a childhood companion and lifetime friend of Derrydale proprietor Eugene Connett. Burke also illustrated Connett's Duck Decoys. How to Make Them, How to Paint Them, How to Rig Them (Van Nostrand, 1953) Siegel et al, The Derrydale Press, A Bibliography, pp. 192-3. Provenance: Eugene V. Connett, 3rd; his son, Eugene V. Connett IV. .

Item #243577       Price: $1,250.00