Born in London in 1867, Allen Seaby was a painter, illustrator, colour woodcut artist and writer. He studied at Reading University’s School of Art where, from 1920-33, he became Professor of Fine Art. He illustrated and wrote a number of books during his career including: ‘Art in the Life of Mankind’ 1928-31, and ‘Colour Printing with Linoleum and Wood Blocks’ 1928. He also travelled widely in Scotland when he was working on the plates for a book on British birds, from 1910-13. Seaby was an influential exponent of the colour woodcut method with his subjects including birds, animals, and scenes from both the United Kingdom and Europe. He won a gold medal for colour woodcut in Milan in 1906 and was a founding member of the Engravers and Printers in Colour and the Colour Print Guild.
In his 1919 book, Modern Woodcuts and Lithography by British and French Artists, Malcolm Salaman wrote the following: "Mr Allen W Seaby, at the University College, Reading, School of Art, is, in his turn, exercising an important influence as teacher, inspiring with his enthusiasm and example a group of most promising students to expression through the wood-block colour-print. In his pictorial studies of bird life, Mr Seaby accomplishes delightfully varied colour-harmonies, and his prints are among the most desirable of their kind." Seaby also had a great interest in wild ponies and his pony books were published between 1923 and 1949, and like many other interwar writers on equine themes, he produced both fiction and factual material.

The woodblock is signed in pencil and numbered 18/100. See Plate 139 in 'British Birds', Kirkman & Jourdain (1935) and the same plate originally issued in 'British Bird Book', Kirkman (1910-1913).