Nigel Hughes trained at the Royal Academy Schools under Peter Greenham and Norman Blamey. He worked as a painter, sculptor, designer and author. This picture forms as part of a series he painted from live specimens covering 50 species of the 'new world' pheasant, a tropical bird family called Cracidae (curassows, guans, and chachalacas). This took eighteen field trips across Mexico down to Uruguay, paintings the birds life-size in their natural habitat. They were shown at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Houston Museum of Natural Science, and Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis, and later at the Fine Art Society in London.