Owl in an orange grove in ‘The Earthly Paradise’.
Cuddled owl standing in water, in ‘The Earthly Paradise’, the centre panel of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.
In Bosch’s major work, the great triptych called The Millennium but better known today as The Garden of Earthly Delights, several more owls put in an appearance. In the left-hand panel, The Garden of Eden, a pop-eyed owl stares out of a dark, circular hole in the fountain of life. According to one scholar, in this instance, ‘the ultimate meaning of the owl is that its wisdom is grounded in the knowledge and transcendence of death.’ This explains the position of the bird ‘at the dead centre of the base of the fountain of life, where, from the omni-present, all-seeing, all-vivifying pupil of God’s eye, the owl stares out at us – symbol of Sophia (= wisdom).’5 Other authors see this owl in a totally different light. In fact they see all Bosch’s owls as ‘favourite symbols of death’ or ‘evil lurking symbols of witchcraft and demonology’ because this was the predominant view of the bird in the medieval period when Bosch was working.6 Once again we are faced with the contradiction that sees the owl both as a wise old bird and as an evil spirit of the night. And if learned scholars who have spent a lifetime studying the complex imagery of Bosch’s work cannot agree, then it is clear that, in truth, the artist has left us with an insoluble problem.
In the great central panel of the triptych there are several more owls and it has to be said that, if they are supposed to be symbols of evil, they are remarkably friendly and cuddly-looking birds. Indeed, the large one standing in shallow water on the extreme left of the panel is actually being cuddled by a small naked human, whose left hand is gently embracing the bird’s breast. One scholar interprets this as depicting ‘a young boy who has entrusted himself to an owl as a sign that he has given himself over to the hallowed wisdom of nature, like his companions, who unconcernedly snuggle up to their feathered teachers.’7 This does seem a more appropriate interpretation of a scene that is supposed to be depicting ‘earthly delights’. Unless, of course, Bosch was extolling the view of the sour medieval churchmen who saw all forms of pleasure as wicked and all forms of wisdom as a threat to the ignorant innocence of the true believer.
ALBRECHT DÜRER (1471–1528)
Albrecht Dürer, the greatest Renaissance artist of northern Europe, is another matter altogether. He was clearly fascinated by owls and his watercolour sketch of an owl dated 1508 has become the most famous and best loved image of an owl in the history of art. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer travelled a great deal around Europe and made copious notes of the wild fauna he encountered on his journeys. His amazingly accurate and lifelike portraits of these animals, often filling the page to the exclusion of any human imagery, make him virtually the first serious wildlife artist in the history of Western art. Dürer’s owl is an owl as an owl – an objective zoological portrayal without any of the usual symbolic overtones. This owl was neither good nor evil, it simply sat for its portrait and was faithfully recorded, creating a work of art that was 500 years ahead of its time.
This does not mean that Dürer was immune to the prevailing urge to render owls as symbolic images. In a number of works he showed the owl being mobbed by other birds. In one such work this mobbing takes place just above the head of a sad looking Christ. The interpretation of this work is that ‘The owl will share the same fate as the wisest of men, besieged by jealous birds just as Christ was killed by men deaf to his words.’8 This interpretation, which sees the mobbed owl as a symbol of a mobbed Christ just before his crucifixion, is at odds with other early readings of this avian event, where the mobbed owl in its wicked persona is viewed as ‘evil attacked by the forces of good’, or the creature of the night attacked by the ‘enlightened’ birds of the daytime. Perhaps Dürer, the avid naturalist, was too fond of owls to portray them in a derogatory fashion.
Little Owl by Albrecht Dürer, 1508, watercolour.
MICHELANGELO (1475–1564)
The divine Michelangelo, as he was known in his own lifetime, was primarily occupied with the human form and rarely depicted animals unless, like horses or domestic livestock, they happened to be associated with a human figure. He only produced a single sculpture of an owl and even that had to play a supporting role to a reclining female nude. The nude in question represented ‘Night’ and the owl was there to act as a symbol of nocturnal darkness. It stands beneath the raised left leg of the woman, with its feet planted firmly on the ground. It is a proud, powerful bird with muscular thighs and a puffed out chest. Its face suggests that it is based on a barn owl. This single owl sculpture by Michelangelo is to be seen in the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, where it is part of a major work that included the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici. Work on this tomb began in 1526 and was completed in 1531 and features two nudes, ‘Night’ (a woman) and ‘Day’ (a man). These figures symbolize human life as being subject to the laws of time and the passing of days. The presence of the sculpted owl acts as a label announcing ‘this figure is the one that represents the nighttime’. Some art historians have tried to make more of the owl’s presence, commenting that there is something protective about it. Its position, standing defiantly under the bent knee of the woman’s leg, closes off the space that would otherwise give access to her genital region, almost as if the bird is standing guard over her more private parts. Could this therefore also be showing the owl in its protective role? Or is it the owl in its more sinister role, associated with death? In which case, perhaps the artist is playing with the idea of placing a symbol of death right next to the part of the woman’s body that produces life. It is insoluble arguments of this kind that keep art historians endlessly at one another’s throats.
Michelangelo’s owl, a detail of his tomb for Giuliano de’ Medici, 1526–31, San Lorenzo, Florence.
During his lifetime Michelangelo hardly ever depicted any sort of animal wildlife. Even the painting of the snake in the Garden of Eden that appears on the roof of the Sistine Chapel is a humanoid creature with a man’s head, arms and torso and only the tail of a serpent. Among his graphic work, there are two drawings of an eagle engaged in mortal combat with a human figure and one of a lion in a similar context. There is a rough sketch of a dragon or two and a tiny scribble of a giraffe, and that it is. The owl is the only wild animal that he ever created as a sculptural form, a singular honour for this singular bird.9 Michelangelo’s rival Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), who was much more interested in depicting a whole variety of animal forms, from the crab and dragonfly to the bear and wolf, apparently never fashioned an owl. His birds were limited to the eagle, falcon, duck and parrot.
FRANCISCO GOYA (1746–1828)
In the eighteenth century the Spanish master Francisco Goya viewed the owl as a nocturnal monster, a creature of nightmares waiting to attack. In his famous etching from the Caprichos cycle he depicts an artist (presumably himself) slumped asleep over his work-table. Around him swirl more than a dozen sinister-looking winged animals. The ones in the distance appear to be giant bats, but when they come closer and we see them more clearly in the light of the room, they have the wings and faces of owls. These owl-bats, or bat-owls, are clearly meant to be haunting the dreams of the sleeper, assailing him from all sides and about to strike him. Here and elsewhere in Goya’s etchings we meet again the evil owl that emerges from the darkness to do us harm.
Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, 1797–9, etching and aquatint.
Goya, ‘Is there no one left to untie us?’, etching and aquatint.
In Goya’s series The Disasters of War, full of unforgettable scenes of rape, torture and death, the owl also puts in a dramatic appearance, although its symbolic role here is slightly different.10 The artist created this series as a personal reaction to the atrocities committed in the Peninsular War (1808–14). The earlier plates show specific incidents of brutality but the later ones are more allegorical. One, with the curious title of Feline Pantomime, shows a religious congregation w
orshipping a large cat, in the manner of the ancient Egyptians at Bubastis. Down swoops a huge owl, clearly intent on sinking its claws into the cat, which twists its head slightly in anticipation of the assault. It would seem that here Goya is making a veiled attack on the Church and has enlisted the owl as a destroyer of false idols. So although this owl is a killer, depicted in a moment of impending savagery, its function here is to oppose and destroy the object of worship of a misguided priesthood. Seen alongside Goya’s other, nightmare owls, this one confirms the artist’s use of the owl as a general symbol of death and destruction, even though the subjects under attack may vary.
EDWARD LEAR (1812–1888)
Edward Lear was a serious Victorian artist whose landscapes and animal paintings have been overshadowed by the nonsense verse and cartoons that he created to amuse the children of his patron, the Earl of Derby. Lear was an ambitious artist, who at one point was engaged to teach Queen Victoria how to draw, but whose output suffered from the fact that he was a slave to epileptic fits and to periods of acute depression. Had he not been cursed by ill health all his life, we might well know him today as a major artist. A close examination of his owl paintings reveals the extraordinary quality of his work. One of his most striking owl portraits is of a spectacled owl, painted in 1836 when he was in his early twenties.11
PABLO PICASSO (1881–1973)
Because of its distinctive head shape and large eyes, the owl has remained a favourite image among artists today. Pablo Picasso produced a whole series of owl paintings and drawings in the 1940s and ’50s and, when he turned his hand to ceramics, the owl was a frequent subject for jugs and jars. He even thought of himself as an owl because of his famously staring eyes. On one occasion, when his friend the photographer David Duncan Douglas had taken a close-up of his intense stare, he turned them into the eyes of an owl. Duncan made two enlargements and asked Picasso to sign them for him. The artist refused ‘then picked up his sketch pad, tore out two pages, reached for his scissors, then his charcoal, and in a couple of minutes finished two self-portraits of Pablo Picasso as an owl.’ He did this in each case by cutting out just his two eyes from the photograph, glueing them to the sketch-pad page and then drawing the head of an owl around them.12
Edward Lear, Spectacled Owl, 1836, watercolour.
Picasso was fascinated by owls and was well aware of the fact that his own face had an owl-like quality. On one occasion he even kept a live little owl in his house as a pet. It had been given to him at Antibes by the portrait photographer Michel Sima (1912–1987) in 1946, who took a memorable photograph of Picasso holding the bird. Sima had found the owl in the corner of the Musée d’Antibes, where Picasso was working. It was in a sad state, one of its claws having been injured, and Picasso took it under his care and had the claw bandaged until it had healed. The owl was placed in a special cage and taken to Paris, where it lived in Picasso’s kitchen, alongside his canaries, pigeons and doves. He fed it on mice, trapped in his studio where they were apparently plentiful, but it proved to be rather a sullen pet, offering its new owner no more than an occasional snort. When this happened, Picasso would shout obscenities at the owl, but they had no effect, except to produce yet another snort.
Picasso’s little owl was a very private bird, refusing to eat a proffered mouse while anyone was in the kitchen. If the room was vacated for only a minute, however, the mouse had vanished when the artist returned. In her autobiography Life with Picasso Françoise Gilot recorded that Picasso ‘used to stick his fingers between the bars of the cage and the owl would bite him, but Pablo’s fingers, though small, were tough and the owl didn’t hurt him. Finally the owl would let him scratch his head and gradually he came to perch on his finger instead of biting it, but even so, he still looked very unhappy.’ Picasso used his pet as a model for his 1946 painting of an owl perched on the top of a chair, called Owl on a Chair and Sea Urchins, and there is a later photograph of him holding the now rather unhappy owl in his hands, with the painting placed behind them. This photograph therefore has three pairs of intensely staring eyes – his, the bird’s and the painting’s, and the similarity between the three was obviously his intention in creating what must have been a difficult pose to hold.13
When it came to owl symbolism, although Picasso must have known that these birds were a symbol of wisdom in ancient Greece, he himself saw them more as monsters of the night, heralding death. He must have been aware of Goya’s etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, discussed earlier, with its sleeping human figure surrounded by a flock of sinister-looking owls. And in 1948 Picasso made a sinister sketch of a disembowelled horse (an image taken from his knowledge of the way horses were abused in Spanish bullfights) which is shown with an owl sitting quietly on its head – clearly a symbol of the impending death of the wounded animal.
RENÉ MAGRITTE (1898–1967)
Owls appear several times in the work of Belgian surrealist René Magritte. Their first portrayal is in a sombre work from 1942, called The Companions of Fear. Painted in Brussels during the Nazi occupation of Belgium it depicts a desolate, rocky landscape in which plants are stubbornly breaking through the hard surface. Five of these plants have blossomed, not into flowers, but into green owls. The leaves, as they rise up vertically from the ground, are gradually transformed into the bodies of the owls, creating a leaf/bird hybrid. The image, as in much of Magritte’s work, is disturbing because it plays tricks with one’s mind. In a letter to a friend, written some years before, the artist commented: ‘I have made a really striking discovery in painting. Up to now . . . the position of an object was sometimes enough to make it mysterious. But as a result of the experiments I’ve made here, I have found a new potential in things – their ability to become gradually something else, an object merging into an object other than itself . . . By this means I produce pictures which the eye must “think” in a completely different way from the usual one.’14
The leaf-owls in this painting have a sinister quality. These are not wise or friendly owls, they are killers. It is as though Magritte is saying that during the wartime Nazi occupation, when fear pervaded the whole country, even the vegetation is liable to transform itself into a group of stealthy nocturnal predators. In 1944 he painted a similar scene, but here the owls have turned white. The central bird has huge ear-tufts that look like horns and Magritte writes to a friend about the ‘pair of pointed ears in my pictures . . . Could there be a relationship with satanism?’15 In other words, he is thinking of owls in their evil, satanic role.
As World War II raged on Magritte decided to react against the drab misery of the period by introducing a new style of painting, called his ‘sunshine’ works, in which he adopted a defiantly optimistic, cheerful approach to his imagery and employed an impressionist technique. In one of these paintings, called The Sleepwalker, he shows us a large owl sitting in a sunlit window. The bird is relaxing with a drink and is content-edly smoking a pipe. A Magritte authority comments: ‘What is significant is that even a lover of darkness and night, the owl, is seen to revel in the presence of light and sunshine. For all its sentimentalism, this work is a fusion of irreconcilables – light and the tenebrous owl. It is the realization of the impossible, a sunshine-loving nocturnal predator.’16 With his typical perversity, Magritte has shown us the bird of darkness enjoying the bright light of day, something a real owl never does. The political message is clear. To the Nazis he is saying, you may have brought us dark days but you cannot crush our spirit. Just the opposite in fact – even the creature that is synonymous with the dark has come out into the sunlight.
OTHER MODERN ARTISTS
Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Jacques Herold, Graham Sutherland, Bernard Buffet and numerous others have occasionally included the owl in their repertoire, but they have often failed to do the bird justice or create any memorable images of it. The American Morris Graves (1910–2001), however, who specialized in idiosyncratic bird paintings, did leave us one haunting image, which, if not spec
ifically of an owl, was certainly inspired by one. Called Little Known Bird of the Inner Eye, it shows a strange, four-legged bird with a broad, flat face and a small, open beak, enclosed in a cramped cavity or cave. Like the hieroglyphic Egyptian owl, its body is seen in profile while its face is depicted staring head-on at the viewer. Painted in 1941, at the height of World War II, it has been said of this picture that: ‘This owl-inspired image expresses the artist’s idea of a hidden part of the mind in which we know a higher reality than that of the daily world.’ Graves himself remarked that ‘I paint to rest from the phenomena of the external world . . . and to make notations of its essences with which to verify the inner eye.’17 It is as though this particular owl-like creature was hiding from the horrors of war by retreating into a safe space, hidden away from the chaos outside. Or, perhaps, that wisdom, in the symbolic shape of a quadrupedal owl, was in retreat from the brutish stupidity of mankind at war.
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