Covey of Quail

Walter Thorp was a self-taught artist who focused his artistic eye on nature, often with a nostalgic outlook. As a participant in UW-Madison’s Rural Arts Program, Thorp impressed Wisconsin audiences with compositions juxtaposing close up studies and distant landscapes, as well as the sincerity of his representations of the natural world. “Convey of Quail” was among the first works Thorp showed at the university’s Rural Art Exhibit. He brought them to the program’s second exhibition after it had already been installed, and John Steuart Curry, recognizing Thorp’s talent, found a place for them in the show. Set in a winter landscape, “Convey of Quail” depicts a group of fourteen quail nestled in an oak tree overlooking a pasture with cows and a person. Thorp’s prominent use of graphite outlines to delineate the birds and oak leaves, as well as a titled, bird’s eye view of the landscape, produce a distinctive flattening effect. According to John Rector Barton’s “Rural Artists of Wisconsin,” Frank Lloyd Wright remarked this drawing reminded him of a Japanese print.