The title compares the black and white plumage of the penguins to the black and white robes of Dominican monks. It was intended to be both gently comic and more bitingly satirical. Marks was noted for both his humourous subjects and his paintings of birds. In his autobiography he notes that birds made better models that humans, since they were less conceited, less greedy and less boring.

Henry Stacey Marks

620mm x 1855mm

Oil on canvas.

Presented by Sir John Holder, 1890.

1890P84