Lilian Medland’s Birds – Seen but Not Heard
Thank you, Alan, for your kind words and for the invitation to talk about my latest book, Seen but Not Heard: Lilian Medland’s Birds, my 52nd book. It is indeed an honour to be asked to speak to this conference and a great pleasure to be among professional colleagues again. I began my career in librarianship in 1951 in the Dept of Immigration in Canberra, then studied for a year on a scholarship of 4 pounds a week at the Library Training School at the Public Library of Victoria before serving as Regional Librarian in the Latrobe Valley of Victoria with its 4 libraries at Yallourn, Morwell, and outlying communities Boolarra and Mirboo North. A stint at the Brixton Public Library in London did not last, as the shifts were 12 hours long! After returning to Australia I was asked to set up a secondary school library, then one in a primary school – the first professional librarian to do so in South Australia. I was proactive in establishing the public library in Burnside, South Australia, and ensuring that a professional librarian was appointed in charge, and I served for many years on the Library Committee. Three children later, I joined the staff as Reader Services Librarian at Wattle Park Teachers College under Principal Colin Thiele, and was involved in the massive move of books to the new campus of the Murray Park CAE, now part of the University of South Australia. Books of course were the order of the day in all those libraries.
Now my main library association has been as a writer and researcher since 2001 with the National Library of Australia, which as you know, has one of the nation’s most significant collections of Australian material. Margie Burn, Head of the Australian Collection, happened to be visiting us on the very day I received the advance copies of King of the Wilderness, the official biography of Deny King. As the Library collects my papers, she was interested to know about the book. When she heard of the amazing contributions Deny King had made to science through his observations over 50 years in remote South West Tasmania, where no roads go even today, she suggested I write an article about it for the Library Magazine. It turned out to be 2 articles and the beginning of a new direction in my writing, as the then Head of Publications, John Thompson, invited me to research and write about natural history treasures in the collection.
One of the major treasures is the Mathews Collection and to my delight the first subject suggested to me was its creator, ornithologist Gregory Mathews. I was 10 when my first pieces of writing, observations about the birds in our Wahroonga garden and nearby bush on Sydney’s North Shore, were published in the children’s pages of the Sydney Morning Herald and the nature magazine Wild Life. And when I heard that the great Gregory Mathews was to visit a bird-watching group in a nearby suburb, I hopped on my bike and rode 4 miles to gaze on him. I didn’t know what to say to him and he certainly did not know what to say to a 10 year old girl! But I did meet Gregory Mathews! And 63 years later I was invited to write about him and see some of his remarkable collection of paintings by an artist I and most other bird-lovers had never heard of – Lilian Medland.
If you have ever had the pleasure of working in the Pictorial Section of the National Library, you will know the sense of expectation and then the thrill when the items you have ordered are brought out to you. Lilian Medland’s bird paintings were breathtaking. Exquisite images, superbly accurate in every detail, with the colours as bright as the days she sat on her verandah in Queenscliff, looking down the coast towards the Heads of Sydney Harbour, painting the birds of her adopted country which she loved to watch but could not hear.
So who was Lilian Marguerite Medland? Born in London in 1880, she was the daughter of a mother with Huguenot roots and a father who was a wealthy business man, a Fellow of the Zoological Society AND a big game hunter! What a contradiction! Lewis Medland brought home trophies – including a gigantic rhino horn to be used as a door stop, a pair of lion cubs which Lilian raised until they became too big for the house and had to be given to the London Zoo, and a pair of polar bear cubs which even Lilian’s devoted care could not save. So they were stuffed, put in a glass case and later brought to Australia with other family treasures, including the rhinoceros door stop. They now reside in the Australian Museum in Sydney.
Lilian had a privileged upbringing with a private governess, enjoying walking expeditions in Scotland, skiing and skating in Switzerland and Austria, and sketching, always sketching wherever she was. An independent spirit, at 16 she began to train as a nurse at Guy’s Hospital in London, where her sketching talent was noticed by leading surgeon, Charles Stonham, who was also an ornithologist. He was compiling a major work, The Birds of the British Islands, and invited Lilian to illustrate it. Published in 5 volumes between 1906 and 1911, with Lilian’s drawings, they were a great success, and led to another invitation to illustrate a revised edition of A History of British Birds, to be published in 1916. Medland completed 248 paintings, but the outbreak of WW1 doomed the book, and it was never published.
In 1907 at the age of 27 Medland contracted diphtheria and had the misfortune to lose her hearing. Already a Fellow of the Zoological Society in her own right, she now was cut off from the lectures and discussions which had meant so much to her. But she found a congenial position as private nurse to the Duchess of Bedford, who was also a bird lover and deaf, and who commissioned several paintings from her, still held at Woburn Abbey, and introduced her to more experienced ornithological artists who mentored her.
Then, while researching at the British Museum, Lilian met Gregory Mathews’ assistant, adventurous Tom Iredale, who had just returned from 9 years in New Zealand, including 11 months observing birds on the uninhabited Kermadec Islands 600 kilometres northeast in the Pacific Ocean. Iredale was captivated by this intelligent feisty woman with her glorious auburn hair and her unconventional ways, smoking, wearing knickerbockers, and riding a bicycle – this in 1911! Mathews also recognised her talent and commissioned her to illustrate a handbook of New Zealand birds. But this proved to be another book which never saw the light of day. Mathews’ next project was A Manual of the Birds of Australia, for which Medland did 46 plates for the first volume, published in 1921. But three subsequent volumes did not eventuate.
In 1923 Medland, Iredale and their 2 children migrated to Australia, settling in Sydney, where Iredale, who had no formal qualifications but wide-ranging interests in natural history, soon found a position at the Australian Museum. The Museum also commissioned Medland to paint a series of 30 birds to be used as postcards, published in 1925. In the 1930s Gregory Mathews again commissioned Medland to illustrate a handbook of Australian birds, and over 5 years she completed 53 coloured plates depicting 883 birds, all the species then known, which she packed meticulously and sent to England. But then another looming world war frustrated publication and Mathews sent the paintings back to Australia for safekeeping. After the war they were returned to England, but never published. Eventually these much-travelled works came back to Australia, still in first class condition thanks to Medland’s careful packing. They are part of the Mathews bequest to the National Library and together with some of the New Zealand paintings have at last been published by the Library in this book – Seen but Not Heard, released last year. In 1950 Medland’s illustrations for Tom Iredale’s book Birds of Paradise and Bower Birds finally brought the widespread recognition she deserved, but although she saw the proofs of her illustrations for his Birds of New Guinea, she died before the book was published in 1956. A stamp she was commissioned to design for Norfolk Island, a painting of the Providence petrel, was not issued until six years after her death.
In all, 5 books for which Medland did the illustrations, were never published, including her last work with her husband, Australasian Kingfishers. So it is fitting that one of her illustrations of kingfishers graces the cover of Seen but Not Heard. Medland’s work is characterised by keen and accurate observation. Although she mainly worked from skins provided by the Museum, her birds are always in lifelike attitudes. One of my favourites is a diminutive blue wren feeding a grossly large baby cuckoo. Medland loved the drama and power of owls and raptors, but she also took great delight in depicting nestlings with wonderful skill and tenderness, and these images of fluffy chicks are some of her most appealing. An unusual feature of Medland’s work is her detailed drawings of beaks, feet and feathers, also reproduced in this book.
When I commenced work on the biographical essay for Seen but Not Heard, the NLA was able to put me in contact with Medland’s grandson, Dr Stephen Iredale. He and his wife Mary-Ann invited me to their Sydney home and I am very grateful for their cooperation. They showed me family treasures brought from England and the works, many from Medland’s English period, which they own. Some of these illustrate the essay. Dr Iredale also lent me the precious unpublished memoir his father Rex wrote about his parents, which provided the material for the description of Lilian’s painting methods and a valuable account of domestic arrangements and family life. Lilian was competent in many areas of daily living – instigating house repairs and home improvements, gardening and growing enough fruit and vegetables to supply neighbours as well as her family, raising poultry, breeding budgerigars and finches, caring for their pet galah named Captain Cook, and their own cats and dogs, also named after naturalists and explorers. She also treated neighbours’ pets suffering from tick bites. Photography was another interest.
As I grew up in the 1940s and through the 1950s, Neville Cayley’s What Bird is That? was my constant companion. It was Lilian Medland’s misfortune that so little of her work was published in her lifetime – only three of the 8 books she was commissioned to illustrate eventuated. She died in 1955 and although her work was appreciated by the Gould League of Bird Lovers and other natural history organisations, it was little known by the general public. Now with the publication of Seen but Not Heard, almost 60 years after her death, the National Library of Australia is redressing this. Another injustice which I would like to see redressed is the fact that Medland has no entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, but only a mention in the entry for her husband Tom Iredale. I have written two entries for the ADB in recent years and I hope Lilian Medland will be the third. Now with the publication of her book the ADB editorial board may view this suggestion favourably.
Seen but not Heard had a most unusual launch in Adelaide – in AUSLAN at the Deaf Church by the deaf pastor, John Hoopman and his deaf wife Sandra, both bird watchers, who like Lilian cannot hear the birds they love. The deaf congregation took Lilian to their hearts, rejoicing in her courage and her determination not to allow her unseen affliction to prevent her from using her talents and fulfilling her passion and purpose. I hope you and the readers you serve will also find delight in her superb work.
Leave a comment