The Last Passenger Pigeon

A flock of passenger pigeons (slate-blue backs, rust-pink breasts) pours through bare winter trees towards a stone aviary with a red-tiled pagoda roof, one bird large and close in the top corner. John A. Ruthven painted Martha, the last of her species, who died at Cincinnati Zoo in 1914; the building she lived in is the one the flock is heading for.

Snow below and pale sky above take up most of the sheet, and the birds repeat in both shape and colour, so this is a slow one. Finished size 68 x 51cm.