AUDUBON

This is the original of an article edited and posted in Living @ Sun City Carolina Lakes. Audubon's is a name we all recogize, but most of us know little about his life. I'm pleased that I was asked to write the article.
The first picture is mine - not Audubon's, of course.

                 

When she was born in 1970, my goddaughter’s grandparents gave her a lifetime membership in the Audubon Society.  Along with the membership came a beautiful, large Audubon print – not one of the originals, of course, but a good one never the less.  It was probably the first time I saw an Audubon print, and I’ve admired them ever since. 

There is something very appealing about the way Audubon depicted the birds, and later the animals, of North America.  Previously, it was the custom of naturalist painters, who dismissed his work as inferior, to depict the subject animal with very little to distract from its pure presentation. They were as lifeless as stuffed specimens in a museum drawer.  Audubon enlivened his pictures by including the subjects and their natural habitat as well. Not just siting subjects, but subjects in motion:  Peregrine Falcons tearing into a goose with feathers flying, or a Louisiana Heron preening its feathers.  They became pictures to collect, pictures to study, pictures to enhance a home.         

John James Audubon was born in what is now Haiti in 1785, and was raised in France.  He was evidently an accomplished, handsome young man, riding, dancing, and playing the violin.  He was interested in his natural surroundings, especially the birds, and began drawing what he saw and collected. Sent to America when he was eighteen to oversee one of his father’s interests, he lived the life of a woodsman and naturalist as well as that of a businessman. Over the years he continued collecting and recording his findings, traveling widely through the north-eastern and middle-eastern states. He was the first person in North America to band birds.  He tied yarn to the legs of Eastern Phoebes to see if they returned to their nests each year.

Though sometimes very successful in business, his own ventures finally failed when he was in his early thirties.  He developed an idea he’d had for a while, and began to work on what would become The Birds of America. He traveled through territory new to him, particularly Alabama, Florida and Mississippi, recording the birds and habitats there.   As he began to do the drawings and paintings, attempting to complete one subject a day, he had to hire hunters to collect specimens for him.  At one point he learned a new painting technique and redid all his previous work.  Along the way he discovered twenty-five new species and 12 sub species, and recorded for us some birds, such as the Carolina Parakeet and the Passenger Pigeon, that are now extinct.

After having the work rejected here, on good advice he took it to England in 1826. It was an immediate success.  The English took to anything relating to wild America. By subscription, lectures, and other means, he raised enough money to begin publishing the series.  Though later issues would be printed on smaller paper, the originals were printed on paper about 29 by 40 inches, showing all the birds life size.  Around 200 sets of 435 plates each were produced until the last print came out in 1838.  Printing the plates and having them hand-colored was extremely expensive. The prints were sent out, five plates at a time, unbound and without text to avoid having to furnish free sets to the public libraries in England. The text, Ornithological Biography, was published separately in Scotland in five volumes, the last of which came out in 1839.

In December of 2010, Sotheby’s sold a complete set of The Birds of America for a record $11.5 million, including the commission.  I know Audubon could have used a piece of that pie.