"Birds of America" is one of the best examples of hand-colored work in America and is highly collectible. John James Audubon (1785-1851) is perhaps the most famous of early American naturalists. The first edition was the only one to be completed using strictly hand-coloring. Prints from "Birds of America" are amongst the most sought after and collectible of hand-colored American prints. The lithography and hand-coloring was completed by J. The work was completed under the direct supervision of J. This hand-colored lithograph comes from John James Audubon's first octavo edition of "Birds of America" published from 1840 to 1844. Here are our closest matches for Downy Woodpecker by John James Audubon. By his death in 1851, he had completed 584 individual studies, 435 of which appeared in The Birds of America.We're sorry this specific copy is no longer available. For years he tracked his subjects to the known edges of the country the journals he kept along the way are a literary achievement in themselves. He pursued his birds with an unusual passion for accuracy and painterly beauty, a fervor caused as much by desperation as by scientific and aesthetic high-mindedness. He had little formal training in art and even less in ornithology, but what he lacked in experience he made up for in braggadocio. It was a respectable, if somewhat chancy, business, and natural history was a popular subject in fact, Audubon faced considerable competition. At the time, marketing was not as unlikely an endeavor for Audubon as it might seem today. By then he was 35 and, he admitted to his wife, a failure.īut throughout his life he nourished a passion for the study and illustration of bird life. He started a steamboat line, and it led him into bankruptcy. After marrying, he opened up a store in Louisville and it, too, went under. He tried to run a lead mine in Pennsylvania. There he started what proved to be a long run of unsuccessful schemes. He was raised in France until 1803, when his father sent him to the United States to avoid being drafted into the Napoleonic wars. This work established Audubon as an early American artist who could attract European attention, and for many, he personified New World culture and its emerging independent existence.Īudubon was born in Haiti, the illegitimate Creole son of a French sea merchant and a local chambermaid. His remarkable ambition and artistic talent culminated in the publication of the monumental Birds of America in 1827-38, a series of 435 aquatints that have only grown in fame since the time of their first appearance. In the second decade of the 19th century, he set out to travel throughout the wilderness of the United States, drawing every notable species of native bird. Audubon devoted his life to realizing his dream of identifying and depicting the birds of North America, and his work has had profound cultural and historical significance. John James Audubon is without rival as the most celebrated American natural history artist. From the first edition “double elephant folio” engraved and printed on Whatman Turkey Mill paper by Robert Havell Jr in London from 1827-1838, the images are exceedingly fine. All images have full margins (38 3/8 inches by 25 inches) and the color is rich and vivid. The gradations of color, especially the greens and yellows, offer evidence of what Robert Havell and John James Audubon intended. Provenance: John Vickers Painter Collection, Cleveland, Ohio.Ī world famous stamp collector and banker from Cleveland circa 1880, Painter’s discerning eye for quality was unparalleled. & Poiteau, Pierre AntoineĪquatint engraving with original hand coloring
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