Stor paradisfugl 1799 - 1860

Johan Christian Ernst Walter created this watercolor of a Greater Bird-of-Paradise sometime in the first half of the 19th century. The image encapsulates a moment in the history of natural science when the project of documenting the world's fauna became newly systematic and newly global. Paintings like these fed the desire for knowledge and specimens that gripped Europe. In Denmark, as elsewhere, the national museum played a key role in promoting scientific discovery and the colonial enterprise that made it possible. Look at the way the bird is carefully posed on its perch, as if awaiting inspection. Walter is not just showing us an exotic creature, he's performing an act of scientific classification. Today, we can examine the museum's own archives to learn more about the networks of collectors, artists, and scientists involved in creating this image and shaping the public's understanding of the natural world. Art, in this sense, is always shaped by social and institutional forces.