John James Audubon Artist and Naturalist 1785 - 1851

1. John James AudubonArtist and Naturalist1785 - 1851 American Flamingo, c.1838

3. John James Audubon (1785-1851) was not the first person to attempt to paint and describe all the birds of America (Alexander Wilson has that distinction), but for half a century he was the young country’s dominant wildlife artist. • His seminal Birds of America, a collection of 435 life-size prints, quickly eclipsed Wilson’s work and is still a standard against which 20th and 21st century bird artists, such as Roger Tory Peterson and David Sibley, are measured.

5. Another artist Alexander Wilson had already published a set of bird prints; American Ornithology* , but Audubon thought he could do better, and he did. • Audubon’s pictures were more life-like and also life size. He had them printed on large sheets of paper 22"X 28". The finished portfolio after it was leather bound was about 26 1/2"X 39". • This portfolio of large prints was labeled a "Double Elephant" portfolio. It was called Birds of America. • The huge leather bound books originally sold for $1,070 in 1826.

6. American Flamingo is one of the 435 hand-colored engravings that make up John James Audubon’s monumental Birds of America, issued in four volumes between 1826 and 1838.

7. The massive publication includes life-size representations of nearly five hundred species of North American birds.

8. Although Audubon was not the first to attempt such a comprehensive catalog, • His work departed from conventional scientific illustration, which showed lifeless specimens against a blank background, by presenting the birds as they appeared in the wild.

9. John James Audubon (1785-1851) was not the first person to attempt to paint and describe all the birds of America • Alexander Wilson has that distinction, • But for half a century he was the young country’s dominant wildlife artist. • His seminal Birds of America, a collection of 435 life-size prints, quickly eclipsed Wilson’s work and is still a standard against which 20th and 21st century bird artists, such as Roger Tory Peterson and David Sibley, are measured.

10. Although Audubon had no role in the organization that bears his name, there is a connection: • George Bird Grinnell, one of the founders of the early Audubon Society in the late 1800s, was tutored by Lucy Audubon, John James’s widow. • Knowing Audubon’s reputation, Grinnell chose his name as the inspiration for the organization’s earliest work to protect birds and their habitats. • Today, the name Audubon remains synonymous with birds and bird conservation the world over.

11. When his pictures were first published, some naturalists objected to Audubon’s use of dramatic action and pictorial design, • But these are the qualities that set his work apart and make it not only an invaluable record of early American wildlife but an unmatched work of American art.

12. Audubon was born in Saint Domingue (now Haiti), the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and plantation owner and his French mistress. • Early on, he was raised by his stepmother, Mrs. Audubon, in Nantes, France, and took a lively interest in birds, nature, drawing, and music. • In 1803, at the age of 18, he was sent to America, in part to escape conscription into the Emperor Napoleon’s army.

13. In the first decade of the nineteenth century he immigrated to the United States to manage a farm his family owned near Philadelphia. • He lived on the family-owned estate at Mill Grove, near Philadelphia, where he hunted, studied and drew birds, • He met his wife, Lucy Bakewell. • While there, he conducted the first known bird-banding experiment in North America, tying strings around the legs of Eastern Phoebes; • He learned that the birds returned to the very same nesting sites each year.

14. He met a young woman named Lucy Bakewell. • They married and she was a constant source of encouragement to him. • He said of her, "With her, was I not always rich?" • They would have four children. Their two daughters died when they were babies, but their two sons lived to adulthood. • The sons, Victor and John, would become artists and help their father with the painting of the backgrounds for his birds. • They were also active in the publication of his works.

15. He lost the farm through neglect, distracted by the overwhelming bounty and variety of exotic birds he found in the region.

16. Audubon spent more than a decade in business, eventually traveling down the Ohio River to western Kentucky – then the frontier – and setting up a dry-goods store in Henderson. • He continued to draw birds as a hobby, amassing an impressive portfolio. While in Kentucky, Lucy gave birth to two sons, Victor Gifford and John Woodhouse, as well as a daughter who died in infancy. • Audubon was quite successful in business for a while, but hard times hit, and in 1819 he was briefly jailed for bankruptcy.

18. When he was 35 years old he took an eight month trip down the Mississippi River to find and paint birds.

19. Audubon eventually set himself the heroic task of locating, collecting, and depicting every species of bird native to North America. • He moved his family briefly to New Orleans, explored the environs of the Mississippi River, a major flyway for migratory birds, and • eventually wandered farther from home to comb the American frontier for unrecorded species.

20. With no other prospects, Audubon set off on his epic quest to depict America’s avifauna, with nothing but his gun, artist’s materials, and a young assistant. • Floating down the Mississippi, he lived a rugged hand-to-mouth existence in the South. • Lucy, a teacher and governess to wealthy plantation families, was able to support herself and their two sons while Audubon pursued his dream of publishing a book of drawings of birds.

21. Audubon went through many financial hardships. If Lucy had not been such an independent woman, he probably could not have fulfilled his dream. • He gave art lessons to support himself, and at one point even taught dancing lessons to make a little money while he looked for a publisher for his drawings.

22. Audubon’s procedure was to study and sketch a bird in its natural habitat before killing it carefully, using fine shot to minimize damage. • His critical innovation was to then thread wire through the specimen, allowing him to fashion a lifelike pose.

24. He worked in watercolor, and had completed some four hundred paintings when he decided to publish them as a folio of prints.

25. At one point early in his career he left 200 of his bird drawings with a friend. When he returned several months later he discovered that a pair of rats had shredded his pictures to make a nest and raised a family in the box. • It was such a tragic event in his life because he had spent years making the drawings. The only thing to do was start over. • This is what he did, even making improvements, and within three years his bird portfolio was full again.

26. Failing to find support in Philadelphia, he sailed for England, where he became lionized as “The American Woodsman.”

27. John James Audubon c. 1826

28. He was not experiencing success in America selling his paintings, so he went to England to sell subscriptions. • His clients had to subscribe to his engravings which were delivered in installments, five engravings at a time. • There would be one large picture of a bird, one medium-size bird, and three small birds. • The pictures were printed from copper plates then watercolored by hand. • A subscription cost $1,000, which was a lot of money in the 1800's.

29. In 1826 he sailed with his partly finished collection to England. "The American Woodsman" was literally an overnight success. • His life-size, highly dramatic bird portraits, along with his embellished descriptions of wilderness life, hit just the right note at the height of the Continent’s Romantic era. • Audubon found a printer for the Birds of America, first in Edinburgh, then London, and later collaborated with the Scottish ornithologist William MacGillivray on the Ornithological Biographies – life histories of each of the species in the work.

30. The engraving firm Robert Havell and Son took on the challenge of reproducing Audubon’s paintings on copper plates and tinting the resulting black-and-white prints by hand.

31. While in England he dressed as a woodsman and let his hair grow long. • He worked long hours and painted in public so people could watch him work.

32. To make Birds of America useful to both professional and amateur ornithologists, Audubon portrayed his subjects at eye level so that • Their distinctive markings would be clearly visible. • He also painted them as near as possible to their actual size.

33. The images are huge, each about three feet by two feet; • nevertheless, to make the larger specimens fit the page, Audubon had to mold them into unusual attitudes.

34. Because the American flamingo can stand up to five feet high, Audubon was obliged to depict that bird bending down, about to dip its beak into the water.

36. His solution has other advantages since it allows us to study not only the unmistakable plumage but other distinguishing traits that might otherwise be hidden from view: • long spindly legs that help the flamingo wade into deep water, • webbed toes to support it on muddy ground, • A serpentine neck to twist the head backward in the water, and • A boomerang-shaped beak to filter water and trap food.

37. Flamingos are uncommonly social creatures, so Audubon included other birds from the flock in the background, standing tall in shallow water; • Some appear in the more characteristic one-legged pose.

39. The distant view also affords a glimpse of the flamingo’s habitat, the marshes and barren mud flats not far from the coast.

40. Audubon’s eye for design lends another dimension to his accurate draftsmanship. • The flamingo’s silhouette emphasizes the elegant curve of its body, even as the abrupt curve of its neck gives the shocking, momentary impression of a headless bird.

41. The angle of the flamingo’s beak echoes the edge of the rock on which it stands, just as the sharp angle of its front leg echoes the long, sinuous line of its neck.

43. Audubon plays up the flamingo’s trademark shade of pink by setting the bird against a background that appears, in comparison, drained of color.

44. Like other American artists who sought to record the unspoiled wilderness, Audubon recognized that much of the wildlife he portrayed was bound to vanish as civilization pushed westward.

45. He himself had first encountered a flock of American flamingos in May 1832, while sailing from the Florida Keys. • By the end of the nineteenth century, the birds had retreated to the southernmost point of Florida, and today can be seen in North America only in captivity.

46. The last print was issued in 1838, by which time Audubon had achieved fame and a modest degree of comfort, traveled this country several more times in search of birds, and settled in New York City. • He made one more trip out West in 1843, the basis for his final work of mammals, the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, which was largely completed by his sons and the text of which was written by his long-time friend, the Lutheran pastor John Bachman (whose daughters married Audubon’s sons).

48. John James Audubon's last major accomplishment was the creation of 150 drawings of North American animals. • Having depicted all the known birds of North America, but still lured by his love of nature and art, he embarked on a final drawing expedition up the Missouri River in the summer of 1843. • With the aid of his son, John Woodhouse Audubon, he created the first attempt ever to document and depict all the mammals of North America.

49. Produced from 1845 through 1848 by the distinguished Philadelphia printmaker, J.T. Bowen, the black and white lithographs were completely hand colored. • Lithography proved an excellent medium for depicting the tactile realism of the mammals' fur.