John James Audubon - Treasury of Audubon Birds: 130 Plates from the Birds of America

Copyright Copyright 1993, 2020 by Dover Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Bibliographical NoteTreasury of Audubon Birds: 130 Plates from The Birds of America is a new selection, first published by Dover Publications, Inc. in 2020, of 130 plates from The Birds of America, from Drawings Made in the United States and Their Territories, by John James Audubon, F. R. L. & E., first published in New York by J. J. J.

Audubon and in Philadelphia by J. B. Chevalier from 1840 through 1844. The Introduction by Alan Weissman originally appeared in Treasury of Audubon Birds in Full Color: 224 Plates from The Birds of America, published by Dover Publications, Inc., New York, in 1993. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Audubon, John James, 17851851, author. Title: Treasury of Audubon birds: 130 plates from the Birds of America / John James Audubon; introduction by Alan Weissman.

Other titles: Birds of America. Selections Description: Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2020. | Summary: Featuring the snowy egret, wild turkey, brown pelican, screech owl, and many others, this new collection gathers 130 select plates from Audubons Octavo edition. Includes an informative Introduction to the artist and his workProvided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019040556 | ISBN 9780486841793 (paperback) | ISBN 0486841790 Subjects: LCSH: BirdsNorth AmericaPictorial works. | Birds in art.

Classification: LCC QL681 .A972 2020 | DDC 598.097dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040556 Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications 84179001 www.doverpublications.com 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 2020 List of Plates The current common name of the bird is the first name given. The name by which the bird was known to John James Audubon, if its different, follows in square brackets. The current scientific name is in parentheses. Introduction John James Audubon today is most often associated with the conservation-oriented societies that bear his namenot that his achievements as a naturalist, a man of letters, and even a pioneer are forgotten. Primarily, though, Audubon was an artist, and his greatest legacy is his monumental series of portraits of the birds of the United States of America. For more than a half-century, popular reproductions of these vital prints have created widespread awareness of Audubons most enduring accomplishment.

Much less recognizedif not entirely obscureto most viewers of this superb art is the somewhat complicated relationship between Audubons original artistic endeavor and the prints that most people see. Born in what is now Haiti in 1785, Audubon was educated in France, his paternal homeland. He studied both natural science and art, a background that made him ideally equipped to observe and interpret nature. He never failed to do this at least informally, for nature had been a passion since his early childhood. When, still young and enthusiastic, he arrived on his fathers Pennsylvania estate in 1803, he began a love affair with North American wildlife, particularly birds, that ended only with his death in 1851. Through the many years when he pursued various unsuccessful business ventures, many of them in what was then only a semitamed wilderness in the interior of the continent, he always found time to observe the winged creatures of the woods, fields, and waterwaysand to shoot them, to the dismay of many conservationists today.

Audubon lived before any distinction was made between studying wild creatures and killing them. His conservationists point of viewmild by modern standards, though remarkable for his timedeveloped gradually, as he lamented the wanton slaughter of avian life that he observed in his widespread travels. In 1820, Audubon finally focused on his lifes work, the ambitious project of painting all the birds then known in America. The difficulties of travel in those days posed a formidable obstacle, and many of the paintings had to be based on preserved specimens sent to him by others. Still, Audubon spent many years trekking through wilderness, observing most of his subjects firsthand on their breeding or wintering grounds or in migration. Without the data we have today, it was tricky to pinpoint the location of a migrating species at a given time of year.

As he pursued this arduous task, obtaining many specimens, he recorded in voluminous journals marvelous accounts of bird behavior never before seenexcept, perhaps, by Native Americans. In many instances, the encroachments of civilization on bird populations and habitats would make duplicating this achievement impossible in only a few years. Audubon also augmented his records with colorful, exciting accounts of his often perilous adventures. The resulting output of words and pictures was a unique, enduring tribute to his adopted country as well as a major contribution to ornithological art, far surpassing in quality anything of the kind that had been done before. Audubons only real rival, Alexander Wilson (17661813), who for years worked along the same lines, was the superior ornithologist but distinctly inferior to Audubon as an artist. Audubon mostly used watercolors but also pastels, ink, and other media.

He engaged the assistance of others for the plants and the backgrounds; a few birds were painted by his younger son, John Woodhouse Audubon. The paintings took long to produce, but this was only the first part of the plan. Audubon arranged to have engravings made from the paintings, which would enable many copies to be produced and colored in. This was very expensive, as each copy of each painting had to be individually hand-colored. To finance the undertaking, Audubon expended a great deal of energy promoting subscriptions to his masterwork among those wealthy enough to afford it. Once he had sufficient financial backing, Audubon took special care to select the right engraver to reproduce his art.

After considerable difficulty and a major false start, the job fell to English engraver Robert Havell, Jr., one of the worlds finest artists of the kind. One of the unusual characteristics of the first edition of The Birds of Americaknown as the double-elephant foliowas that its 435 plates reproduced their subjects life-size. Even with the enormous dimensions of 29 by 39 inches, this necessitated presenting some large birds in twisted, unnatural positions, a quirk of Audubons art that subsequent artists were wise not to imitate. Despite this and a few other idiosyncrasies, the results were magnificent, more so in view of the labor involved. Havell first made copperplate engravings of the paintings; then as many as fifty assistants painstakingly, by hand, colored each print of each engraving. The tremendous amount of work involved explains the size of Havells staff, as well as the price of each final set: $1,000, a gigantic sum at that time.

In fact, Audubon had considerable difficulty collecting the money from even some of his wealthiest subscribers! With his own time-consuming field research, the actual painting, the delivery of the paintings to England, and the process of engraving and coloring, it is little wonder that the publication of the full double-elephant folio encompassed more than eleven years, from 1827 to 1838. Considering that concurrently Audubon took voluminous notes and submitted them for separate publication as Ornithological Biography