Avery Biographical Record
SCANNED
Biographical Record
Thomas Avery
Born 9 Sept 1807 · Died 14 July 1848
Occupation: Naturalist
Cause of Death: Gored by a bearded pig he was sketching. He had been sketching it for some time. It had been watching him do it. His companion’s account contains the sentence ‘I told him twice’, underlined, and then, further down, ‘the drawing is very good’.
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Thomas Avery drew animals better than almost anyone and understood them worse than almost anyone. He had an unearthly gift for the living line — his hornbills look about to leave the page, his gibbons are in genuine motion, and every naturalist who saw his portfolio wanted him on their expedition. What none of them appreciated until they had him was that Avery’s method consisted entirely of getting closer. Not close enough, in his view, was any distance from which he could not see the eye. He was charged by a sun bear in 1841, treed by macaques in 1843, and bitten, at various times, by six different species.
He was also the most cheerful man in any camp he entered, wrote wonderfully silly letters home, and appears to have been genuinely incapable of imagining that an animal he found beautiful might not reciprocate. The last sketch is of the pig. It is finished. It is, as his companion says, very good — a heavy, intelligent, deeply unamused animal, rendered with obvious affection, from a distance of perhaps nine feet.
ARCHIVE NOTE: The Avery portfolio was purchased by the Society in 1902 chiefly for its accuracy, yet is consulted regularly mostly for pleasure. Field personnel are reminded that Mr. Avery’s example is instructive in exactly one direction. The plates in the Archive are the 1889 Tokyo edition.