Evening Star Newspaper, January 8, 1933, Page 66

Rex Brasher Decided at the Age of 10 to Out- do Audubon, and 53 Years Later Finds His “Impossible” Job Done. BY HELEN WELSHIMER. EX BRASHER has finished his life's work, begun at the age of 10. He is lonely now that the task is done. He is 63 now, and 53 years are a long, long time to spend on a bird trail. Today there are 900 plates of differ- ent birds preserved for posterity because a small boy heard his father say that somebody ought to paint the birds of North America accurately and vividly, “That's what I'll do,” the 10-year-old young- ster decided. That is what he has done, although few people knew that he was America’s greatest bird authority until the finished collection of his plates—handmade, every one of them—was shown in New York not long ago. He has spent most of his life stooping among tell weeds, drifting in duck boats, rowing against currents, wading streams, eves on a bird in the sky or a tree. In addition to his fame as a painter of birds and a specialist on their habits, he has gained a reputation for patience that would make even Job jealous. HEN the 900 plates, with 1,200 species of birds, were ready in 1928 Brasher dis- covered that it would cost $500,000 to reproduce his drawings by the four-color process, and even thien he might not get them exactly as he wanted them. “Well, that's that,” he suid. He didn't give up. He had worked too hard. He had forsaken his family, his friends, all interests, to paint birds. He wasn't going to surrender now. Instead, he spent the next five years coloring, by hand, a limited edition of 75 sets of the 900 color plates. There was no adventure in that. routine, But now it is done. “I used my own technique on the pictures,” the artist says. ‘“No school told me how to do it. Nobody else ever has tried to paint s0 many birds—and do it so accurately. Just dull “The plain background of the white paper. makes the snow scenes. Shadows go in be- fore the color goes on the paper. I work back- handedly. But now the birds are completed!” There is something of tragedy in that. And yet Rex Brasher, who has been lonely all his life, and has not minded it, is reveling in the applause that the public is giving him. Not because he wants praise, but because it is good to know that other people appreciate his birds. Even the ambitious 10-year-old child never dreamed of such a reward. His job is finished. Rex Brasher stretches his long brown body and smiles reminiscently. ‘The long years have been grand, he says. “But the hardest joit came when I found I was through!” 'HIS is the way the tale began: The Brasher family lived in New York City. Rex’'s father, Philip Marston Brasher, for whom the Brasher warbler was named, was an ornithologist. He admired John James Au- dubon, who made 435 hand-colored engravings of birds of the United States, nearly 100 years ago. But the elder Brasher didn’t always agree with him. Audubon’s colors were too bright THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., JANUARY 8 1933 e ) One of Rex Brasher’s paintings, showing a goshawk chasing grouse. Brasher’s striking picture of canvasback ducks flying in formation. ;omefima. Composition wasn’t alweys correct, e said. “But Audubon deserves great credit,” Rex Brasher says. “He had to take his plates to England to have them completed. Those who worked on them had never seen the birds. Of course there were going to be mistakes.” One day the elder Brasher made his famous remark about America’s bird needs. Rex heard him. Just exactly as & young knight might have challenge in any one of the adventure books he loved, he picked up the giove. a November landscape is portrayed in this picture by Brasher. There wasn't much money in the family. There had been, but it was gone. Rex started a collection of birds. He studied taxidermy and attended St. Francis College in Brooklyn., When he was 15 he got a job in the engraving department at Tiffany's. Then he went to Portland, Me., and worked as an art engraver. That was his background of preparation. OUR years had passed. He was 19. He bought a sloop and started down the Ate lantic coast. He let the sloop drift as he watched the birds, making notations, sketching, sketching, sketching—— Eighty-six different species of birds flew around him, one afternoon, on Far Rockaway, at Long Island. He sold the sloop at Key West and went home, He had to catch the winged motion and the colors before he forgot them. Months passed. He made 400 pictures. But one day, in 1900, he looked at his handiwork quite carefully. He didn't call ¥ good. He built a fire and burned the 400 pic~ tures that he had made. He was 30 years old then. He worked faster. There was so much to be done, he will tell you. “I never belicved that I would live to com= plete the task,” he says. Then 1905 came around. He looked at the work that he had done over. He didn’t like it. He burned most of those pictures. OW he was sure that he would never, never reach the end of the North American bird tradl! He couldn't live long enough! Every morning he continued to rise at 3:30, to go out into the fields, the swamps, along the coast, anywhere at all, to watch for the birds be wanted. If it took an hour, or if it took & month, he stayed. He refused to pose his birds. They must be lifelike, in natural motion, he insisted. Besides, he wanted to catch them in attitudes where they were rarely seen by the usual observers, but which the birds themselves took habitually. For 40 years he traveled across the continent on his research work. For two years he sailed his own boat from Maine to Florida. He tramped through Florida alone. Finally, he was satisfled with the pictures. The group was complete. He made his plates. There were 900 of them in all. ‘The tall, lean man with snow-white hair and keen eyes that know distances, went to see Wil- liam Edwin Rudge, the printer. Rudge admired the work immensely. “But it will cost $500,000 to reproduce the plates in four colors,” he explained. OLORS were one of the things that Brasher didn't dare lose. He didn't have $500,000, though. He had bhad no time to make money, to marry, to cultivate friends during his life, He had gone in pursuit of birds with a sketch- ing bhoard and a pencil. But he wasn't discouraged. Audubon had shown only 489 species of birds. Yet he thought that he had included every bird that trailed across the North American skyline or perched on foliage in her swamps. Brasher had shown 1,200 speecies on his 900 elaborate plates. The colorations, due to sex, age, environment and other conditions, had necessitated the use of 50 many feathered fig- ures that his total had reaeched 3,000, He hime self had made every piate by hand from his own colored sketches. Now he didn’t have the money to go on! He smiled, the slow, time and wind weathered Continued on Pigth Page