Sutton, George Miksch (1898-1982)

Mexico’s Modern Audubon: The 100-year-old story of John J. Audubon’s painting conquest of American bird life is being re-enacted for Mexico by an energetic, sandy haired University of Michigan professor.

With a boyish enthusiasm that belies his 49 years, George Miksch Sutton, curator of birds at the University museum, has dedicated himself to the monumental task of recording in watercolors the 600-odd distinctively Mexican species of birds. He has made five expeditions below the border in the last 10 years and plans another, “probably in a year or two.” The net results of his labor to date are hundreds of specimens for his laboratory, 50 11 by 29-inch pictures amazing in their life-like detail and a mountain of notes for a proposed text. Sutton expects to cover his chosen field with about 250 color plates. -"The Duluth News-Tribune" (Newspaper) (Duluth, Minnesota) Mar 07, 1948.

Obituary: George Miksch Sutton, bird book artist author Norman, Okla. (AP) – Ornithologist George Miksch Sutton, who wrote 11 books on birds and provided illustrations for 15 others, is dead at age 84 after an extended illness.

Sutton, who died Tuesday, received his doctorate from Cornell University in 1932 and joined the faculty of the University of Oklahoma in 1952 after serving with the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and teaching at the University of Pittsburgh. He was also curator of birds at Pennsylvania, Cornell, and the University of Michigan before joining the Oklahoma faculty. He served as curator of birds at Oklahoma’s J. Willis Stovall Museum until his retirement in 1968 and was George Lynn Cross professor of zoology emeritus and curator emeritus of the museum at the time of his death.- "The Duluth News-Tribune" (Newspaper) (Duluth, Minnesota) Dec 9, 1982.

Submitted by: Edward P. Bentley, Art Researcher and Historian, Greenville, Michigan.