Winter Birds was discovered hiding at the bottom of an archive drawer, which is a fair indication of the kind of design it is: modest, unfashionable when it was put away, and better than it was given credit for. Garden birds perch among thorny briars and rose bushes, drawn with the accuracy of nineteenth-century natural history illustration and the informality of a sketchbook.
The briars are what make it. Thorns and bare stems give the design a wiry structure a straightforward floral would lack, and the roses are set into that structure rather than laid on top of it, so the pattern holds together in the gaps as well as in the incident. It is a winter design in the proper sense, with the plants drawn at the point where the leaves have gone and the shape of the plant is visible.
Papers of this sort belong in the small, warm rooms of a house rather than in the grand ones: a bedroom under the eaves, a landing, a study, a snug with a fire. They sit naturally with old chintz, painted furniture, brass and rush matting, and they improve as more is put in front of them, since the drawing is fine enough that a picture or a mirror hung against it reads as an addition rather than an interruption.
