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(1785-1851)
FOLIO
QUADRUPEDS
Prints
are from The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North
America and are approximately 22" x
28" in size. |
The Cougar,
Male,
#96 |
The Cougar,
Female & Young,
#97 |
Hare Indian
Dog, #132 |
The
Grizzly Bear, #131 |
Southern
Flying Squirrel, #28 |
The
Red Texan Wolf, #82 |
Black-Tailed
Deer, #78 |
Franklins
Marmot Squirrel, #84 |
Caribou
or American Reindeer, #126 |
Prairie
Dog, #99 |
The Musk Ox, #111 |
Collard Peccary #31
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Polar Bear, #91 |
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OCTAVO
QUADRUPEDS
Prints are from The Quadrupeds of North America (1849-1854)
and are approximately 10" x 7" in size.
(More Octavo Quads available, please
inquire) |
American
Bison, Male, #56 |
Polar
Bear, #91 |
Grey
Fox, #21 |
Prairie
Wolf, #71 |
Red
Texan Wolf, #82 |
Canada
Porcupine, #36 |
Black
American Wolf, #67 |
Cougar,
Female with Young, #97 |
Hare
Indian Dog, #132 |
Jackall
Fox, #151 |
Long-tailed Skunk, #102 |
Wolverine, #26
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Mountain Brook Mink, #36 |
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John James Audubon (1785-1851) |
John
James Audubon (1785-1851),
the most famous bird painter of all time was born
illegitimately in Saint Domingue (Haiti, West Indies). His father,
a French Sea and Naval Captain, who fought with
Admiral DeGrasse in the American Revolution, owned
sugar plantations there. Audubon’s
biological mother, Jean Rabin, a French émigré to Santa
Domingo, worked as a chambermaid and died the year
he was born. In 1791, at the age of 6, Audubon was taken to France
to a villa near
Nantes where he was officially adopted and reared
as Captain and Ann Moynet Audubon’s own son. He was christened
Jean-Jacques Fougere (translated “fern”) Audubon to placate
the anti-Christian French Revolutionaries who frowned on Christian
names and were beginning
The Reign of Terror. In 1803 Captain Audubon managed
to save his son from Napoleon’s conscription by sending him
to Mill Grove, another family property just outside Philadelphia,
PA on the Schuylkill
River. Here John James Audubon lived the life of
a country squire intrigued by the splendors of nature and local society.
Lucy Bakewell,
the highly literate daughter of a prominent English émigré family
living on a neighboring estate, became his wife
after a courtship of five years.
The Audubon’s proceeded with ambitious plans to build a comfortable
life in the mercantile business, moving to Henderson, KY setting up
a profitable store and raising their surviving children, Victor Gifford
and John Woodhouse. The Panic of 1817 precipitated a bankruptcy over
investments in a large saw and grist mill. This crisis led to Audubon’s
decision to seriously pursue his bird paintings. From this time, life
became a series of crisis and itinerate jobs to support his art. Committed
to her husband’s life work, Lucy moved to St. Francisville,
LA to open a school and rear their sons.
On May 17,1826
with Lucy’s
moral and monetary support, Audubon sailed
from New Orleans aboard the cotton schooner, Delos, bound for
Liverpool, England to begin work to publish his
paintings. In less than a week, he was invited
to exhibit his drawings at the Royal Institution
and proclaimed a great American genius.
In November of
1826, William Home Lizars of Edinburgh begins to engrave Plate #1 “The Wild Turkey” of Audubon’s immortal
work The Birds of America. In May 1827, Robert Havell, Jr. of London
takes over the printing after Lizar’s hand-colorists strike.
The great work
will take eleven years to produce 435 life-size plates printed on
the largest
paper available, Double-Elephant. It will be
financed by subscribers who receive a sequence
of parts containing 5 prints (1 large bird,
2 medium, 3 smaller birds making up each part),
to be paid upon receipt. The entire work totaled
87 parts costing $1,050 U.S., a fantastic sum
in the 1830’s.
During this period, Audubon must constantly acquire new subscribers
to make up for those that quit, monitor the printing and coloring,
insure timely shipments and collect payments. The payment for each
part will finance the production of the next five prints.
Audubon must
return to America in 1827, 1831 and 1836 to paint more birds to
fulfill his
goal of illustrating all the known American
birds. During his 1831 trip to America, he formed one
of his most important and lasting friendships
when he was introduced to the Reverend John
Bachman, the 41-year-old pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church
of Charleston, SC. Audubon moved into Bachman’s large home on
Pinckney Street and Bachman helped Audubon locate
new species of birds to paint and subscribers
to the growing work. June 20, 1838, the 87th
5 print part of The Birds of America is published,
concluding the great work after an arduous twelve
years.
Audubon and his family continue to work producing a small copy of
the Double-Elephant Folio created with the use of a technical device
called the camera lucida. Called the Royal Octavo Edition, and more
affordable to Americans at $100US these hand-colored lithographs were
first published from 1840-1844.
Audubon collaborated
again with his old friend, John Bachman, the American expert on
mammals,
to produce Folio and Octavo works called
the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. The
Reverend Bachman’s
daughters Maria and Eliza married Audubon’s two sons.
The Octavo works
became bestsellers, with the United States government purchasing
copies
to be given to visiting international dignitaries.
Georges Cuvier, a 19-century leader of European
science, characterized Audubon’s great achievement as “the most magnificent monument
which has yet been erected to Ornithology.” And so it is considered
to this day.
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