Francis William Locke Ross

Initially Francis William Locke Ross (1793-1860) pursued a naval career. He was a Midshipman on the HMS Tagus in 1813 which sailed to Peru, the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile and the Marquesas Islands. He kept an illustrated journal which is now cared for by the New York Public Library. He left his commission in 1830 and moved to Broadway House, Topsham.

From this point forwards he devoted his life to studying natural history. He kept detailed and beautifully illustrated journals of his studies (now at the Devon Heritage Centre). Ross built up a private museum which was open to the public. It included ethnographic and archaeological material as well as some rare and valuable specimens of birds, shells and geology. 

The birds in the painting are a black-necked red cotinga (Phoenicircus nigricollis) from South America and a green jay (Cyanocorax yncas), both from South America as well as an African Grey Hornbill (Lophoceros nasutus). The hornbill and green jay may be the ones now in the collection at RAMM.

‘His great and accurate detail and finish, combined with a fine eye for colour, gave him the power of combining all the requirements of scientific accuracy with artistic effect, and made his works really of great value as illustrations of natural science.’ (Gentleman’s Magazine, 1861).

Ross’ monographs on hummingbirds and British gulls were his most complete works but were never published. 

Ross died on Christmas Day 1860. Five years later, on her death, his widow left his extensive collection to RAMM. Over 400 birds, 115 ethnographic items, 1000 fossils and shells as well as insects, mammals and reptiles are still in our care.

A smaller, but otherwise almost identical, version of this painting is on display in the Finders Keepers? gallery. RAMM acquired the work in 1895 from an unrecorded source.

Visual description: an oil portrait of a middle-age man seated at a desk. He is dressed formally, in a dark coat over a white shirt with a high collar wrapped in a cravat. His right arm rests lightly on the arm of the chair, while his left lies on an open book at his side, holding a pair of spectacles. A dead bird with red and black plumage is laid atop the open book. There are two more dead birds laid on a book on a shelf behind him.