John
James Audubon was born April 24, 1785,
in Sainte-Domingue (now Haiti), the illegitimate son of Jean Audubon,
a married French sea captain. Most recent sources identify his
mother as Jeanne Rabine, a young French serving woman who died
in November 1785; earlier books cite an unnamed créole slave woman.
The future artist was originally known as “Jean Rabin,
créole de Sainte-Domingue,” “créole”
meaning, in this context, a child of European descent born in
the West Indies. Young “Jean” had several half-sisters
from his father's long-time alliance with Sanitte, his French-octoroon
mistress. The senior Audubon, who was also a merchant, planter
and slave dealer, sent the boy to France when the child was three,
as slave rebellions began rocking Sainte-Domingue. The boy traveled
as “Le Mr. Maison Neuve, agé de 3 ans, fils du Mr. Audubon.”
One of Sanitte’s
daughters, the fair-skinned Rose, was sent to join the French
household the following year.
Little Jean “Newhouse” arrived in France in 1788, on
the eve of the revolution. Anne Moynet Audubon, some years older
than her husband, gracefully added both of his natural children
to her home in Nantes. His new mother encouraged the boy’s
artistic pursuits along with other genteel studies: music, dancing
and fencing. Academics failed to hold his attention. He later
wrote of skipping school to roam in the fields, returning home
hours later with bird’s
nests, lichens, and curious stones.
However, political upheaval edged closer to the family. One of
little Jean’s half-sisters was murdered in the Sainte-Domingue
uprisings. As the French monarchs were executed in Paris, the
elder Audubon consciously allied himself with the new regime,
becoming Citizen Audubon. The Reign of Terror reached Nantes in
1794 and thousands of alleged “monarchists” in the area
were executed. With the intent of protecting his natural children
and establishing young Jean as his heir, Audubon and Anne legally
adopted Jean and Rose, secretly had them baptized, and even declared
that both children were theirs by birth. In the process, young
Jean became “Fougère” meaning “Fern”:
the Revolution had outlawed Christian names along with outlawing
the monarchy and the Catholic Church.
His father aimed the eleven-year-old Fougère
toward a naval career, but seasickness and a total disinterest
in military regimentation worked against this future, and three
years later, the boy failed to pass the requisite exams. At the
age of fifteen, Jean Fougère was hunting, stuffing and drawing
regional birds. The French were renowned for their naturalist
studies and the Audubon home valued knowledge, so the young artist
probably had access to Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle
and may also have seen the more realistic works of Jean-Baptiste
Oudry.
As the new century dawned, young men from throughout Europe headed
for America, hoping to make their fortunes while escaping the
Napoleonic wars ripping their homelands. Eighteen-year-old Audubon
arrived in America in 1803 to run his father’s
Pennsylvania farm and to avoid conscription into Napoleon’s
army. As a draft-age French natural, emigration would have been
difficult, so he again traveled on forged papers, his birthplace
now listed as Louisiana and his name anglicized to “John
James Audubon.” Along with the new name, he brought gun,
fiddle, flute, drawing materials and the wardrobe of a young dandy.
Farm management was a low priority: His imagination was quickly
captured by the diversity of North American birds.
FUELING HIS OWN MYTH: Although largely self-taught as an artist,
Audubon later claimed that he'd studied in France with Jacques-Louis
David. This was a piece of the artist’s
personal myth making. A more bizarre example of creative autobiography:
that he was really the prince of France, the Dauphin Louis Charles
Capet, son of the guillotined King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.
The young artist and the lost prince had both been born in early
1785 and both were bird fanciers. This exotic rumor, which could
have cost him his life in France, just added to the handsome young
man's glamour in the New World.
In a cave on the farm property, Audubon began observing a pair
of nesting plovers, who gradually accepted
his presence. He studied form, habits and motion, even tying bits
of thread to their legs—the first time birds were banded?—so
he could recognize them if they returned the following spring.
During this time, the artist developed his style and his method
of working with birds. While Audubon spent long hours in live
observation, he “collected” as well. He’d
kill a specimen, then use wires in varying gauges to pierce and
pose the still-supple body. His own acute powers of observation
led him to create more realistic poses than those normally attained
in taxidermy. As a result of this method, Audubon’s
paintings always carried the declaration, “Drawn from nature
by John James Audubon.”
Among the prosperous estates near Audubon’s
was one owned by William Bakewell, who came from well-connected
English gentry stock. Audubon met the eldest daughter, Lucy, in
1803 or 1804. In addition to learning deportment and needlework,
the Bakewell daughters were encouraged to self-school themselves
from their father’s
large library, and the seventeen-year-old Lucy was far better
educated than most young women of the era. She and John gravitated
together quickly. He later told their sons, “My heart followed
every one of her steps.” Lucy’s
father was less impressed: The French youth, his English still
abominable, seemed shiftless even by gentleman-farmer standards.
Audubon’s own père would oppose the match unless
his son could support himself and a family. As a result, around
1807 young Audubon began operating a general store on the Kentucky
frontier, which allowed him to marry Lucy in 1808. The enterprise
was the first of a series of struggling retail businesses, complicated
by trade difficulties, the Embargo Act and unhappy partnerships.
Meanwhile, hundreds of early bird-paintings were destroyed by
rats while stored at a friend’s
farm. These were rough years for the family.
MORE ABOUT LUCY AUDUBON: Though many older Audubon biographies
stress that Lucy was no great beauty, newer works emphasize the
couple’s
shared vision and exceptional working partnership. They had two
sons; two daughters died in infancy. Lucy helped
run the sprawling bird-art business whenever the couple was together
and she supported
the family financially
while John travelled. John missed
his wife desperately and was always anxious for her to join him
when circumstances allowed. Her husband was flirtatious by nature.
Lucy’s response: “If
my nature were a jealous one, I’d
consider every bird in the country my rival.”
As her sons grew, they followed their father into the wilderness,
first to learn and assist, then continue his work. Lucy didn’t
have a stable home until 1842—thirty-four years after they
wed—when Audubon bought 24 acres along the Hudson River nine
miles north of Manhattan. The family named the new home Minniesland:
fittingly, “Minnie,” a Scottish word for “Mother,”
was the family’s
nickname for Lucy.
In March 1810, a chance visit to Audubon's general store by Scottish-American
ornithologist Alexander Wilson marked a turning point. Wilson
saw some of Audubon's bird studies and showed the younger artist
the first two volumes of his own American Ornithology.
Audubon supposedly remarked that Wilson drew birds nearly as well
as he did himself. Wilson's ambitious undertaking planted a seed:
Audubon gradually became determined to attempt a similar project.
When the economic panic of 1819 forced Audubon to quit his retail
ventures entirely, he shifted his focus to art. The family moved
to the Louisville-Cincinnati area, where Audubon taught drawing,
painted portraits and worked briefly as a taxidermist at the Cincinnati
museum, while Lucy worked as a governess.
On October 13, 1820, Audubon set out from Cincinnati to achieve
his goal of recording the bird species in North America. With
him went 13-year-old pupil-assistant Joseph Robert Mason. Using
New Orleans as a base in 1821-1822, Audubon hunted extensively
to supply the birds needed, while Mason sought out and drew the
appropriate flowers and plants that make up the vital backgrounds
in the paintings. In Natchez, Audubon met itinerant painter John
Stein (or Steen), with whom he briefly studied oil painting; the
two men even had a portrait-painting business partnership for
several months. Over the next few years, Audubon traveled the
United States and even journeyed to Labrador in search of specimens.
The original paintings of more than 1000 birds were complex works
using mixed media—watercolor, pencil, pen, pastel—to
accomplish the rich variety of effects desired. Posing the birds
in realistic landscapes and including accurate habitat were radical
departures from Wilson’s
very accurate but fairly stilted portrayals.
In 1824, Audubon was ready to seek a publisher. Alexander Wilson
had died in 1813, before American Ornithology was completed.
However, Philadelphia artist Titian Ramsey Peale was laboring
to finish Wilson’s
illustrations and many people still had active financial interests
in the Wilson project. One of Wilson’s
collaborators, prominent American naturalist George Ord, was especially
vocal in his opposition to Audubon. Perhaps provoked at Audubon’s
temerity in competing with Wilson, Ord accused the younger artist
of plagiarism and scientific error, and managed to rally the Philadelphia
scientific societies and prominent collectors against him. This
attitude carried into the New York publishing community as well.
Audubon’s
clouded reputation was inadvertently fueled by his own arrogant
demeanor, flamboyantly backwoods fashion sense and lack of formal
scientific training.
Unable to find an American publisher, in 1826 Audubon travelled
to England. Arriving in Liverpool with only his artworks and a
letter of introduction, within eleven days his American bird paintings
were on exhibit at the Liverpool Royal Institution. The rustic
buckskin outfits and long, flowing hair—considered “hick”
in New York and Philadelphia—had exotic appeal in England.
The ornithologist-artist-aspiring publisher now became his own
publicist and salesman as well. Audubon garnered support for his
project through individual subscribers, a common means of publishing
independently at the time. This meant that subscribers pledged
to pay for pages as they received them over the course of several—or
many—years. The subscribers themselves were responsible for
having these loose pages boxed
or bound together;
as a result, the bindings vary widely. Audubon remained in England
for much of the next decade, overseeing the complex production
of The Birds of America. Lucy was able to join him in 1830.
A visit back to Florida during the 1831-32 winter with plant-rangling
assistant and landscape artist George Lehman allowed Audubon to
add Southeastern birds and flora to his huge undertaking.
PUBLICATION DETAILS ABOUT BIRDS: The amazingly ambitious Birds
of America was published between 1828 and 1838 as a “double
elephant” folio (29” x 40”), at that time the largest
page-size ever attempted in book publishing. Why so big? Because
every bird is life-size, which also accounts for the angled
poses on some of the larger birds. The four giant volumes contained
435 hand-colored, life-sized aquatints, executed by both Edinburgh
engraver William Home Lizars (on the first ten prints, until his
colorists went out on strike) and London-based engravers Robert
Havell, Senior and Junior (through the remaining stages). Pages
were printed and distributed in 87 “signatures” of five
prints each, eventually totaling the full 435 pages. The plates
represent 1065 birds of 489 supposedly distinct species of American
birds. Fewer than 300 sets were created, and the double elephant
folio, with its life-sized birds, was never republished in its
entirety, although 106 of the plates were reissued in New York
in 1860.
Accompanying text by Audubon could be found in an additional five-volume
work entitled Ornithological Biography (1831-1839), augmented
and edited by distinguished Scottish naturalist William MacGillivray.
Ornithological Biography was self-published in England
in 1831. To secure the United States copyright—vital, as
pirating English books into unauthorized American editions was
a major enterprise—a printed (rather than fair-copied) text
of the Ornithological Biography had to be submitted in
America, which meant withholding distribution in Britain until
the U.S. copyright was secured. The US copyright was put in son
Victor’s
name, to avoid old creditors from the Kentucky years. The appeal
of Ornithological Biography
wasn’t as a scientific text—it was Audubon’s
own vivid accounts of his pioneer experiences in the Ohio and
Mississippi river valleys. By April 1831, Blackwood’s
Magazine was hailing
Audubon as “quite simply one of the world’s great ornithologists.”
When the first American edition of Birds was published,
it was again by subscription. Between 1839 and 1843, prints were
sent out in groups of five prints (one “signature”)
at a time, priced at $1.25 per signature. This edition was a direct
imitation of the English version, but done as hand-colored lithographs
in a smaller, octavo size (11” x 8”) rather than the
life-sized “double elephant” format. The first American
edition numbered 1000 and contained 500 plates.
Meanwhile, the artist returned to the United States and began
working on another giant project, The Viviparous Quadrupeds
of North America, showing the continent’s
mammals. Audubon’s
fame in 1837 prompted President Andrew Jackson to grant him the
use of a naval cutter to explore the coastline from New Orleans
to Galveston. Audubon found other allies, too. En route on his
1831-2 Florida trip, Audubon had met Charleston artist Maria Martin,
who contributed plant- and landscape background to Audubon’s
works from that time on, and her brother-in-law, naturalist Rev.
Dr. John Bachman. Over the next decade, the Audubon-Bachman households
established strong ties of friendship, shared interests and marriage.
Both Audubon sons married daughters of Rev. Bachman, although,
sadly, both
young women were claimed by “consumption”—tuberculosis—within
a few years. Lucy took charge of several motherless grandchildren
and both young fathers buried their grief in their own father’s
work.
Rev. Bachman, the Quadruped project’s
co-author and editor, cautioned Audubon early on that the mammals
would be more difficult to study than birds due to their “more
secretive habits.” Audubon traveled extensively while working
on Quadrupeds, including an 1843 trip up the Missouri to
Fort Union and overland along the Yellowstone. He returned in
Indian hunting dress with live deer, badgers, and foxes, portfolios
and collected artifacts. Sons John Woodhouse Audubon and Victor
Gifford Audubon (trained in art and specimen collection by their
father) and botanical artist Maria Martin
all contributed to Quadrupeds,
which appeared in imperial folio
in 1845-1848 and
contained 150 28”-x-22”
plates (portraying
life-sized mammals
wasn’t an option, even for
Audubon). Quadrupeds
was published by subscription,
with 280 subscribers. During
the Quadrupeds project, Audubon’s health began to
fail. His stamina, eyesight and mental abilities were all affected.
His sons took on ever-increasing
responsibilities in the work, creating the art, raising financial
support, seeing the images through the printing process, handling
distribution and every aspect of the complex endeavor. John
Audubon passed away at Minniesland
in 1851.
POST-AUDUBON
PUBLICATION: A second American edition of Birds of America
was published and distributed between 1850 and 1870 by J.T. Bowen,
supervised first by Audubon’s sons and then probably by Lucy.
While this Birds was the same as the first U.S. edition
in most ways, it can be recognized by the crucial distinction
of halftone backgrounds, a new process considered quite novel
at the time. An 1848 octavo edition of Quadrupeds was also
issued after John Audubon’s death, the animal images redrawn
to the smaller size by Audubon’s sons; later editions were
pulled from those same stones.
John James Audubon was a handsome and romantic figure and during
his life consciously helped to fuel the aura of mystery surrounding
himself. His portrait by American painter Henry Inman depicts
him as the archetypal frontiersman—wrapped
in a cloak,
long and flowing hair, shirt rakishly
open at the neck. Audubon clung to his colorful frontier image
and allowed his somewhat unorthodox conduct to create a picturesque
impression of his wilderness life. Such showmanship had been expedient
for a man in constant need of engraving and publishing funds:
His charisma funded his art.
And Audubon’s artistic contribution is considerable.
He’d rarely painted in oil. His watercolors, however, sustain
his reputation. More than 400 of the original watercolors depicting
birds are now in the New York Historical Society, sold by Lucy
in 1862 following the deaths of both of her sons. The importance
of the watercolors rests on keen observation of nature and accuracy
of detail, combined with great originality in composition. While
the contributions of Audubon’s
collaborating plant- and background artists have been underestimated,
the unique vision jointly achieved was absolutely Audubon’s
own. These works communicate a feeling for living nature that
raises them far above the dry ornithological artistic reportage
that had gone before.
Some of Audubon’s
continuing impact can be inadvertantly
traced to Lucy: By the late
1850s, she
was running a home-based school to support herself and her grandchildren.
George Bird
Grinnell was a student there, and he later credited the
“profound and lasting impression”
that the late artist’s artwork,
artifacts, bird skins and animal taxidermy had on him. In 1886,
Grinnell, then editor of Forest and Stream magazine, founded
the Audubon Society. Intended to help stop the relentless
slaughter of the nation’s birds, branch societies quickly
sprang up throughout the country and by 1905, were incorporated
as the “National Association of Audubon Societies for the
Protection of Wild Birds and Animals.”
Although Audubon had been a very avid hunter as a young man, “collecting
specimens” in truly alarming numbers, his sensibilities shifted
as he aged. The fact that his images live on so extensively as
prints has profoundly heightened awareness and appreciation of
North America’s
diverse wildlife.
Audubon’s masterly compositions preserve vital images of
American nature in its early pristine state. They hold a palpable
sense of wonder at the New World's abundant and diverse wild life.
Small wonder they still heighten our awareness of the natural
world, still satisfy our esthetic sensibilities.
1785 - Born in Sainte Domingue (Haiti), April 24
1788 - Taken
by father to Nantes, France
1803 - Returns to United States
1808 - Marries
Lucy Bakewell (1787 - 1874)
1809 - Birth of son Victor Gifford Audubon (d.
1860)
1810 - Meets Scottish ornithologist-artist Alexander Wilson and sees
his work
1812 - Birth of son John Woodhouse Audubon (d. 1862)
1820 -
Sets out from Cincinnati for New Orleans with pupil-assistant Joseph Robert Mason
1826 - To England to find a publisher
1828-1838 - English publication
of “elephant folio” The Birds of America with life-sized pictures
1831-2 - Works in Florida over the winter, with assistant George Lehman painting
plants and backgrounds
1831 - Begins working with artist Maria Martin and
her brother-in-law, naturalist Rev. Dr. John Bachman
1831 - Publication of
Ornithological Biography
1836 - Son John weds Maria “Ria” Bachman
(d. 1840), eldest daughter of Dr. Bachman
1839 - Son Victor weds Mary “Eliza”
Bachman (d. 1841), another daughter of Dr. Bachman
1843 - Audubon travels
to the headwaters of the Missouri and to the mouth of the Yellowstone
1845-1848
- Publication of Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, with Dr. Bachman
supplying written text
1851 - Death of John James Audubon, January 27.
Text
by Renna Shesso and Stephen Savageau © 2001
SELECTED
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blaugrund,
Annette. The Essential John James Audubon. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999.
Boehme, Sarah E. John James Audubon in the West: The Last Expedition.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000.
Durant, Mary and Michael Harwood. On
the Road with John James Audubon. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1980.
Falk, Peter Hastings. Who Was Who in American Art, 1564 - 1975. Madison
CT: Sound View Press, 1999.
Gerdts, William H. Art Across America: Two
Centuries of Regional Painting 1710 - 1920 - The Plains States and The West.
New York: Abbeville Press, 1990
Gerdts, William H. Art Across America:
Two Centuries of Regional Painting 1710 - 1920 - Volume Two, The South, The Midwest.
New York: Abbeville Press, 1990.
Peterson, Roger Tory, ed. The Art of
Audubon: The Complete Birds and Mammals. New York: Times Books, 1979.
Sipherd, Ray. The Audubon Quartet. New York: St. Martin's Press. First
in a series of Audubon-artwork-based fictional mysteries.
Streshinsky, Shirley.
Audubon: Life and Art in the American Wilderness. New York: Villard Books,
1993.
