Harrison Weir was an animal painter and illustrator. He was born in Sussex in 1824 and was educated at Camberwell before learning color printing under George Baxter. Weir was an independent minded artist with an amazing capacity for work; he started to draw for The Illustrated London News in 1847 and was still working for them at the turn of the century, their longest serving artist. He numbered among his friends Charles Darwin and among his hobbies pigeon fancying and natural history. Weir is characterized by an extraordinary accuracy and life in his work, his poultry live in the farmyard and his birds in the wild, rare among Victorians.