Discretionary income and time for entertainment were byproducts of growing economic stability and industrialization. Activities that were once associated with survival, such as hunting, were now practiced for sport. The stylized abstraction of this large silhouette weathervane would have presented an irresistible shooting target cut against the sky. In fact, it was made for a nineteenth-century shooting club in Seaville, Cape May County, New Jersey. Before legislation limited the hunting and shooting of wildfowl and other birds, they were slaughtered on a wholesale scale for sport, food, and fashion. This weathervane is in the form of a Hudsonian curlew, one of the species popularly hunted in the area. The unidentified maker used iron strapwork and applied iron to create an abstract simulation of the markings along the curlew’s face and one wing on the side of its body. The Curlew Bay Club was informally established about 1874, and incorporated two years later. It resembled a small hotel, with ten bedrooms on the second floor, and two bedrooms and a large dormitory room on the third. The weathervane, perhaps made in a local ironshop, was situated on a forty-square-foot, two-story barn behind the clubhouse. By 1890 the club was operated as a year-round sportsman’s retreat and summer campground.

Stacy C. Hollander, “Hudsonian Curlew Weathervane,” exhibition label for Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum. Stacy C. Hollander and Valérie Rousseau, curators. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2014.

In his nine-volume work American Ornithology (1808–1814), Scottish-born naturalist Alexander Wilson (1766–1813) described the flight of the elusive Hudsonian curlew: “They fly high and with great rapidity. Their appearance on these occasions is very interesting: they collect together from the marshes as if by premeditated design, rise to a great height in the air, usually an hour before sunset, and, forming in one vast line, keep up a constant whistling on their way to the north, as if conversing with one another to render the journey more agreeable. . . . The glittering of their beautifully speckled wings, sparkling in the sun, produces altogether a very pleasing spectacle.” He further writes, “In the month of June, while the dewberries are ripe, these birds sometimes frequent in the fields, in company with the Long-billed Curlews, where brambles abound; soon get very fat, and are at that time excellent eating.”

John James Audubon noted in Birds of America (1840–1844) the abundance of Hudsonian curlews on the shores of New Jersey during the month of May. This monumental silhouette weathervane is in the form of a Hudsonian curlew, as the whimbrel was known in the nineteenth century. The unidentified maker cleverly used iron strapwork and applied iron to create an abstract simulation of the markings and coloration along the curlew’s face and one wing on the side of its body. Once placed atop a shooting club, it endures as a symbol of the height of the sport hunting and market gunning period.

The weathervane was fashioned for the Curlew Bay Club in Seaville, New Jersey. The original clubhouse resembled a small hotel, with ten bedrooms on the second floor and two more and a large dormitory room on the third. The impressive curlew was situated on a forty-square-foot two-story barn behind the clubhouse from about 1874 through the 1940s. The Curlew Bay Club appears to have been informally established by 1874, according to a signboard that reads “Curlew Bay Club House / Come one Come all / Theodr Schoute Proprietor / April 30, 1874.” It was incorporated on May 8, 1876, by a list of stockholders that included Dallas Peltz, James Wallace, and Theodore Shute (r Schoute), who purchased the actual property. In 1882, the club was sold to John and William Lewis, and by 1890 it had passed into the Charles Wright family, whose descendants own the club today. Wright operated the club as a year-round sportsman’s retreat and summer campground; it now functions primarily as a black powder cartridge-rifle shooting club.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Hudsonian Curlew," in American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 365-66.