by Bettye Ross
For want of a name I call the small ground birds in Neville W. Cayley’s painting above the carrara marble fireplace in Lydham Hall’s bedroom, Water Hens. I don’t know if they actually are Water Hens for although I have Mr. Cayley’s Book What Bird is That? I have never taken the time to compare the picture with any of the colour plates in this same book whilst I’ve been at Lydham Hall. Perhaps someone else can answer the question of “What Bird” is it in this same painting?
However I have found a little detail of Neville W. Cayley from various sources which I think readers will find interesting.
Neville William Cayley was born January 7, 1886 at Yamba, northern New South Wales and inherited his love of art and birds from his father Neville Henry Peniston Cayley who was an English painter who died in Sydney 1903.
By the time of Neville W. Cayley’s death on March 17, 1950 (aged 63 years) the above mentioned book was in its 14th edition and today is of great value.
Besides producing Our Birds, Our Flowers and The Tale of Bluey Wren he illustrated several of the bird books of naturalist-journalist A.H. Chisholm and painted many colour plates in Dr. G.A. Waterhouse’s What Butterfly is That? He also wrote and illustrated books on budgerigars, parrots, Australian finches and fairy wrens. His main medium in painting was water colour.
Many of his native fauna painting appear in Ellis Troughton’s books of Australian furred animals. In 1932 His Majesty King George V was presented with a Neville W. Cayley painting of Australian Splendid Parrakeets by the London Agricultural Society. A fitting gift as King George owned a pair of these beautiful birds and expressed his warm appreciation for the gift.
In 1924 an exhibition of Cayley’s bird paintings was held at Tyrrell’s Gallery in Sydney. The display was opened by the then Minister for Education (Mr. Bruntnell) who stated that the study of birds was a valuable aid in education and commended Mr. Cayley on his work which would promote the advancement of responsibility of the community toward the protection of these beautiful emblems of flight.
Mr. Neville W. Cayley was closely associated with the Gould League of Bird Lovers, was a member for II years of the National Park Trust, past president of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists’ Union and a past president and fellow of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales.
Cayley’s mother (Lois nee Gregory) ran a Guest House at Cronulla where he was a founder of Cronulla Surf Life Saving Club, and he also played a part in the founding of the Surf Life Saving Association of Australia.
Dame Mary Gilmore stated once that he (Neville Cayley) “loves the birds and in the birds, the land of Australia”. Cayley instilled vibrancy into each of his paintings of Australian birds and his technique showed their plumage colours in sunlight and shadow. His detailed studies of birds, their nests and their eggs have been used in encyclopaedias or ornithological treatises and never appear lifeless or uninteresting.
His work was likened to a Swedish painter Bruno Liljefors in that he never over asserted the decorative possibilities of birds in his paintings, many of which included those of Australian coasts, ocean, cliff and beach.
As The Sydney Morning Herald in 1939 stated “brilliant scarlet, blue, green and gold, pale, almost transparent in tint, black and white and silver, indeed as many-hued as they are numerous, the birds of Australia as shown by Cayley form the keynote for the protective colouring with which their haunts enfold them. Paintings of birds by Cayley transform any room in which they are placed into an aviary, a garden sanctuary, or a fragment of bushland inhabited by vital, jewelled, blossom-birds.”
Lydham Hall, an Australian home, is a fitting one to hold a painting of Australian birdlife by the Australian Neville William Cayley. Take a closer look at this exhibit next time you are there.
Editor’s Note: A birdwatcher in the SGHS believes the birds are white-browed crakes (Poliolimnas cinereus).
Sources:
The Sydney Morning Herald various copies
Australian Dictionary of Biography 1891-1939
Cayley, Neville W. – What Bird Is That: A Guide To The Birds Of Australia
Larkin, Maryanne – Sutherland Shire: A History to 1939
NSW Births, Deaths, Marriages Index 1788-1918
This article was first published in the May 2000 edition of our magazine.
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