A short life of the author
John James Audubon produced the most magnificent work of natural history illustration ever created — The Birds of America (1827–1838), a set of 435 hand-coloured engravings depicting every species of North American bird known to him, printed at life size on sheets of paper measuring approximately 39½ by 26½ inches. The book is a staggering achievement of art, science, publishing, and sheer human determination: Audubon spent over a decade painting the original watercolours, travelled throughout the United States and into Canada to observe and collect specimens, and personally supervised the production of the engravings in Edinburgh and London. When a complete set sold at auction for $11.5 million in 2010, it became the most expensive printed book ever sold.
The Improbable American
Jean Rabin Audubon was born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in 1785, the illegitimate son of a French naval officer and planter. He was raised in France and emigrated to the United States in 1803, settling near Philadelphia. He anglicised his name to John James Audubon and married Lucy Bakewell, who would prove the steadfast supporter of his artistic ambitions through decades of financial instability.
Audubon tried and failed at several business ventures — a general store, a sawmill, a steamboat — while devoting himself with increasing single-mindedness to the observation and painting of birds. He spent years wandering the American wilderness, from the Eastern Seaboard to the Mississippi Valley, shooting birds (the standard practice of the era), posing them with wires, and painting them in vivid, dynamic compositions that showed each species in its natural habitat and at life size — a radical departure from the small, stiff profile illustrations that characterised previous ornithological works.
The Birds of America
Unable to find an American publisher willing to undertake such an enormous project, Audubon sailed to England in 1826. He found a receptive audience among the British scientific and aristocratic communities, who were entranced by his paintings, his frontier persona (he cultivated the image of the “American Woodsman”), and the sheer ambition of his undertaking.
The engravings were produced by Robert Havell Jr. in London between 1827 and 1838, issued in sets of five prints at a time (87 “parts”) to subscribers who paid over $1,000 for the complete set — an enormous sum. The engraving technique — aquatint with hand colouring — was labour-intensive and expensive, and Audubon was constantly hustling for new subscribers while simultaneously painting new watercolours and travelling back and forth between America and Britain.
The completed work contained 435 plates depicting approximately 497 species (some plates show multiple species). The paintings are celebrated not only for their scientific accuracy — Audubon was a meticulous observer who depicted plumage, posture, habitat, and behaviour with extraordinary fidelity — but for their dramatic composition. His birds are shown in action: hunting, feeding, fighting, mating, and fleeing. The famous plate of the wild turkey, the blue jays raiding a nest, the golden eagle carrying a hare — these are not scientific illustrations in the conventional sense but works of art that happen to be ornithologically precise.
Ornithological Biography
Ornithological Biography (1831–1839, 5 volumes) is the companion text to The Birds of America, containing detailed descriptions of each species’s habits, habitat, and characteristics, interspersed with “Episodes” — narrative essays describing Audubon’s adventures in the American wilderness. The Episodes are vivid, sometimes tall-tale-like accounts of frontier life that are valuable as both natural history and early American literature.
The Quadrupeds
In his later years, Audubon collaborated with the naturalist John Bachman on The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (1845–1848, 3 volumes of plates; 3 volumes of text, 1846–1854), a companion work depicting American mammals. The project was completed largely by Audubon’s sons John Woodhouse and Victor Gifford Audubon, as Audubon’s health and mental faculties declined in the late 1840s. He died in New York in 1851.
Collecting Audubon
A complete set of The Birds of America (Robert Havell Jr., London, 1827–1838, 435 hand-coloured plates, double-elephant folio) is the most valuable printed book in the world. Fewer than 120 complete sets were originally produced, and perhaps 100 survive. Individual plates from broken sets are widely collected and are among the most recognisable images in the history of art. The first octavo edition (J.T. Bowen, Philadelphia, 1840–1844, 7 volumes) made the work accessible to a broader audience and is also collected. The Ornithological Biography (Adam Black, Edinburgh, 1831–1839, 5 volumes) is the essential companion text.