John James Audubon

The name "Audubon" is synonymous with American ornithological art and science, and today it is used almost generically in that sense. Yet Audubon's contribution to American art lives not so much through what he painted, but in how he painted it. Audubon made a dramatic-and difficult-break with precedent in rejecting rigid, static and scientific portrayals of wildlife that had been the European tradition for centuries. Instead, he depicted his subjects life-size and in their natural habitats, engaged in what he watched them doing over years of travel through swamps and backwoods: courting, nesting, hunting, swooping, fighting, feeding, resting and preening. Audubon endowed his subjects with a vitality and realism-sometimes romantic, occasionally brutal-that no artist before him had achieved.

Born in 1785 in what is now Haiti, Audubon was the illegitimate son of a French sea captain, Jean Audubon, and a local woman. His mother died within a year of his birth, and his father sent him to France to be raised. At the age of eighteen, his family sent him to America to avoid conscription into Napoleon's army and to manage his father's business interests. His father owned property at Mill Grove, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, and Audubon's first experiments in bird banding were done there. He fell in love with a neighbor, English-born Lucy Bakewell, and they were married in 1808.

From 1809 to 1819, the couple lived in Kentucky and had two sons, Victor and John Woodhouse. Audubon first opened a store in Louisville, although birds continued to be his main interest. He later moved to Henderson where he started a mill. Successful business interests made him a wealthy man; however, the economic climate eventually changed and he was forced into bankruptcy, losing all his property. Relying on his other talents, he earned a living by painting portraits and teaching classes in art, dancing, and French.

In 1820, he traveled to Cincinnati to work at the Western Museum. He taught art lessons and was able to exhibit his bird paintings. On October 12, 1820, he left Cincinnati on a flat boat for New Orleans, traveling over 700 miles, and sketching birds along the way. A student accompanied him to do the backgrounds in his paintings. On January 7, 1821, Audubon arrived in New Orleans and in June he took a job as tutor to Eliza Peary, daughter of a wealthy landowner, at Oakley Plantation. There he was able to continue his studies of birds. Lucy Audubon soon followed her husband to New Orleans, where she started a school for children of plantation owners. From 1820 on, Audubon set out on what eventually became one of the most extraordinary publishing enterprises in history. Over the following nineteen years, the artist roamed the rocky coast of Labrador to the lush, humid Florida Keys and west through the cypress-laden bayous of Louisiana and the vast plains of Texas. He worked in a broad range of media-watercolor, pencil, pen, pastel and oil-and he painted as much as possible with freshly-killed specimens, which he wire in lifelike poses. He conducted detailed examinations of his specimens to determine what they ate and how they were constructed, and he wrote lengthy passages in his journals about their habits.

Unable to convince anyone in America to publish his bird paintings, he eventually booked passage on a cotton freighter to Liverpool, England, arriving July 21, 1826. He was able to exhibit his drawings at the Royal Institution in Edinburgh. There he met engraver William H. Lizars and hired him to publish his Birds of America. Lizars was to transfer each bird painting onto huge copper plates, print each page with the plate, and oversee the hand-coloring of it. The original subscription price for The Birds of America was $1,000, a considerable sum at the time. After only a few plates had been engraved, a colorists' strike forced Audubon to switch to London-based Robert Havell, Jr., a skillful engraver and artist who later moved to America and painted Hudson River views.

The collaboration with Havell was fortuitous, as the engraver proved especially talented at providing background, habitat, and other elements missing from Audubon's often hurried original paintings. It took eleven years to complete the entire set of 435 plates. No more than 200 editions were printed. Only two complete unbound sets exist today-one is owned by the New York Historical Society in New York City and the other by the Darwin Museum in Moscow.

In 1843, Audubon made his final journey to the West, to Yellowstone, to record the mammals of America. These paintings were published as The Quadrupeds of America. All but two of Audubon's original watercolors were purchased from Lucy Audubon by the New York Historical Society soon after his death. Audubon's grave is located in Upper Manhattan, at Trinity Cemetery, on land once owned by him.

As we examine Audubon's prints and paintings today, it is difficult to envision the passion, energy and single-mindedness it must have taken to create this art in early nineteenth century America. Audubon began work on The Birds of America at middle age, 35. He was repeatedly discouraged by printers and naturalists alike. And when he did pursue his vision, he tramped off into the America wilds with virtually no money and few assets, save the ceaseless loyalty of his wife, Lucy, who remained convinced of her husband's genius even as others denigrated his talent. With the project drawing to a close, the artist observed that in completing his work, he had "growed neither fat, rich, or lazy." Nevertheless, Audubon lived to enjoy fame on both sides of the Atlantic for the monumental work that conveys his lyrical vision of America's wilderness heritage.