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John James Audubon (1785-1851) was not
the first person to attempt to paint and describe all
the birds of America (Alexander Wilson has that
distinction), but for half a century he was the young
country's dominant wildlife artist. His seminal Birds
of America, a collection of 435 life-size prints,
quickly eclipsed Wilson's work and is still a standard
against which 20th and 21st century bird artists, such
as Roger Tory Peterson and David Sibley, are measured.
Although Audubon had no role in the
organization that bears his name, there is a connection:
George Bird Grinnell, one of the founders of the early
Audubon Society in the late 1800s, was tutored by Lucy
Audubon, John James's widow. Knowing Audubon's
reputation, Grinnell chose his name as the inspiration
for the organization's earliest work to protect birds
and their habitats. Today, the name Audubon remains
synonymous with birds and bird conservation the world
over.
Audubon was born in Saint Domingue (now
Haiti), the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and
plantation owner and his French mistress. Early on, he
was raised by his stepmother, Mrs. Audubon, in Nantes,
France, and took a lively interest in birds, nature,
drawing, and music. In 1803, at the age of 18, he was
sent to America, in part to escape conscription into the
Emperor Napoleon's army. He lived on the family-owned
estate at Mill Grove, near Philadelphia, where he
hunted, studied and drew birds, and met his wife, Lucy
Bakewell. While there, he conducted the first known
bird-banding experiment in North America, tying strings
around the legs of Eastern Phoebes; he learned that the
birds returned to the very same nesting sites each year.
Audubon spent more than a decade in
business, eventually traveling down the Ohio River to
western Kentucky - then the frontier - and setting up a
dry-goods store in Henderson. He continued to draw birds
as a hobby, amassing an impressive portfolio. While in
Kentucky, Lucy gave birth to two sons, Victor Gifford
and John Woodhouse, as well as a daughter who died in
infancy. Audubon was quite successful in business for a
while, but hard times hit, and in 1819 he was briefly
jailed for bankruptcy.
With no other prospects, Audubon set off
on his epic quest to depict America's avifauna, with
nothing but his gun, artist's materials, and a young
assistant. Floating down the Mississippi, he lived a
rugged hand-to-mouth existence in the South while Lucy
earned money as a tutor to wealthy plantation families.
In 1826 he sailed with his partly finished collection to
England. "The American Woodsman" was literally an
overnight success. His life-size, highly dramatic bird
portraits, along with his embellished descriptions of
wilderness life, hit just the right note at the height
of the Continent's Romantic era. Audubon found a printer
for the Birds of America, first in Edinburgh,
then London, and later collaborated with the Scottish
ornithologist William MacGillivray on the
Ornithological Biographies - life histories of each
of the species in the work.
The last print was issued in 1838, by
which time Audubon had achieved fame and a modest degree
of comfort, traveled this country several more times in
search of birds, and settled in New York City. He made
one more trip out West in 1843, the basis for his final
work of mammals, the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North
America, which was largely completed by his sons and
the text of which was written by his long-time friend,
the Lutheran pastor John Bachman (whose daughters
married Audubon's sons). Audubon spent his last years in
senility and died at age 65. He is buried in the Trinity
Cemetery at 155th Street and Broadway in New York City.
Audubon's story is one of triumph over
adversity; his accomplishment is destined for the ages.
He encapsulates the spirit of young America, when the
wilderness was limitless and beguiling. He was a person
of legendary strength and endurance as well as a keen
observer of birds and nature. Like his peers, he was an
avid hunter, and he also had a deep appreciation and
concern for conservation; in his later writings he
sounded the alarm about destruction of birds and
habitats. It is fitting that today we carry his name and
legacy into the future. |
