Richard Barrett Talbot Kelly MBE, MC, RI, (20 August 1896 – 30 March 1971), known to friends and colleagues as 'TK', was a British army officer, school teacher, and artist, known especially for his watercolour paintings of ornithological subjects.

[1] His father was also a successful artist,[1] as was his paternal grandfather, the Irish landscape and portrait painter, Robert George Kelly.

[1][3] He served as a Forward Observation Officer with the 9th (Scottish) Division, 52nd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, in France, from May 1915 until January 1917.

[1] He successfully requested a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps, but before he could undertake pilot training, the war came to an end.

[9] For his work at Farnham he was appointed, in the 1944 New Year Honours, a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

[1] Upon leaving the army in 1929, Talbot Kelly was appointed Director of Art at his alma mater, Rugby School and, during the 1930s began to publish books of his paintings.

[12] A copy of his 1927 poster for the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, "Zoo: Common and Spiny Lobster", is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

His ability to exclude what he knew to be the facts and concentrate on what he had seen puts his work into the highest category of bird painting.