Christopher Webb Smith

Christopher Webb Smith (30 May 1793 Camberwell – 18 January 1871 Florence) was an English-born bird painter and public official.

During his years in India, he developed the habit of rising early and going out with his gun, shooting selected specimens and returning home to record their size, weight, habitat and make drawings of them.

Doyly was an English baronet, a senior civil servant with the East India Company and a prolific amateur artist.

Webb Smith found that he and D’Oyly shared a common interest in natural history and sketching.

While in India, Smith acquired a reputation as ornithological artist and collaborated in producing two books with Sir Charles D'Oyly - The Feathered Game of Hindostan (1828) and Oriental Ornithology (1829), Smith depicting the birds and the foliage, D'Oyly the background landscapes.

As a result, he and D'Oyly collaborated on a third volume, The Birds, Flowers, and Scenery of the Cape, and finished 56 plates, though the book was never published.

[12] • A collection of 500 + water colour paintings of African and Indian birds and scenes now in the Department of Zoology, Cambridge University[13]