The renowned naturalist and painter John James Audubon (born Jean Jaques Fougere Audubon) was the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and plantation owner. His mother died a year after his birth, and he was taken to Nantes, France, where he was raised by his father's wife. Audubon began drawing during his youth, and early shoed an interest in ornithology that was encouraged by his father. According to his own journals he studied under Jaques Louis David around the turn of the century, yet the truthfulness of this account has often been questioned. Audubon first came to America in 1803, to oversee his father's landholdings in Mill Grove, Pennsylvania; it was here he began to hunt and draw birds. After his father's estate was sold in 1807, Audubon traveled around the United States, eventually settling in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Lucy Bakewell, where he opened a dry goods business.
In 1810 Audubon met the ornithologist Alexander Wilson, whose illustrations for American Ornithology inspired him to devote more attention to his own studies. Over the next decade he developed in technique and method, electing to execute his bird studies in watercolor. In the early 1820s, he began working as an itinerant portrait painter and art instructor in order to support his family. He traveled extensively along the Mississippi River in search of commissions, at the same time continuing to produce studies of birds. Slowly he began to make plans to publish a series of engravings depicting the birds of North America. After an unsuccessful attempt to find both a publisher and patrons for this project in America he went to England.
Upon arriving in the autumn of 1826, he began exhibiting his watercolors; eventually he found an engraver in Edinburgh, who was willing to undertake the production of the elephant folio of The Birds of America. However, the large, hand-colored engravings soon proved too ambitious a project for the Scottish engraver, but Audubon was able to have the series completed by Robert Havell, Jr. in London. The Birds of America was published in sets of five engravings, issued five times each year; thus, as the initial sets received favorable critical notice, Audubon soon found the subscribers he needed to see the project through to completion.
In 1829, after seeing his project successfully launched, Audubon returned to the United States to resume work on his watercolors. He made a brief return to London in the following year to supervise the production of the engravings, but, subsequently left this responsibility to his son, Victor. From 1831 to 1838 he and his assistant, Joseph Kidd, worked diligently to complete the needed watercolors of the North American birds. As soon as The Birds of America was completed, Audubon commenced work toward The Viviparous Quadrapeds of North America. Between 1840 and 1842 Audubon traveled extensively in the Northeast, painting numerous American mammals. By 1846, however, age and poor health forced him to retire from his pursuits, and much of the remaining work for the Vivaprous Quadrapeds was carried out by his sons. He spent his last years residing in New York.
ABG and JPH
References
Lucy Bakewell Audubon, ed., The Life of John James Audubon, the Naturalist (New York, 1869).
Alexander Adams, John James Audubon: A Biography (New York: G.P. Putnam Sons, 1966).
Francis Hobart Herrick, Audubon the Naturalist: A History of His Life and Time, (New York: Dover, 1968).
