1985 Is Bicentennial of Painter’s Birth : A Big Year for Audubon Admirers

A century and a half after they were painted, the birds of John James Audubon still look ready to tweet, quack, gobble, honk or hoot, and fly right off the page.

Audubon, born 200 years ago in the Caribbean to a French sea captain and his Creole mistress, spent much of the first quarter of the 19th Century studying and sketching the birds of the newly independent United States. He published the fruit of his labor in London from 1828 to 1839, in a series of 435 engravings, printed on oversized Double Elephant Folio paper and sold by subscription. Each was hand-painted with watercolors.

The complete set, of which 175-200 were printed, sold for $1,000 each.

Favorite Among Collectors

His meticulous detail and coloring draw continuing admiration from ornithologists, and his sense of drama and composition make him a favorite among art collectors.

This year, the bicentennial of his birth, has been a boon year for Audubon collectors. In January, Sotheby’s sold off a set of birds for $1.7 million.

The record price for a print was set at Sotheby’s in June, 1983: $45,100 for the “Trumpeter Swan,” the result of fierce bidding between two buyers. Several of the prints are expected to sell in the $20,000 range at this auction, said Susan Pinsky, a Sotheby’s Audubon expert.

The set was the last to have been sold during the artist’s lifetime, purchased by the City of New York in 1850 for $1,000.

Six other sets are owned and shown from time to time by other institutions in the city, including the public library, which has three, Columbia University and the Historical Society.

Ambitious Reproductions

A number of reproductions are also being offered to mark the bicentennial, the most ambitious of them a joint project by a noted art publisher and the National Audubon Society, the conservation group named for the painter.

Abbeville Press, using the Audubon Society’s set of prints, is issuing a complete portfolio of bound reproductions in a limited edition, billed as the most expensive newly published book ever at $15,000.

Despite the best technology used in modern reproductions, they do not capture the vividness of the original paintings and prints. Wendy B. Hyman, manager of the Abbeville project, says that the best reproduction techniques can achieve only 80% of the original color and detail.

Audubon was superb in depicting both detail and action.

“He was the first one to really paint birds as living things, out of the glass case,” said ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson. He described Audubon as a pioneer not only in painting, but in discovering and describing the feathered species of eastern North America and studying their behavior.

“He had a voracious appetite for the natural world and an uncanny ability to paint it,” said Carole Slatkin, an Audubon expert at the New York Historical Society, site of a permanent display of the original paintings on which the prints were based.

“No other bird painter has done as well in portraying the character of the birds,” said Pinsky of Sotheby’s.

Three eider ducks are shown in a domestic squabble, Virginia partridges are being attacked by a hawk, and the mockingbirds are fighting off a rattlesnake encircling their nest.

Critics have accused Audubon of making mistakes, arguing for example that rattlesnakes do not climb trees. However, ornithologists say he was astoundingly accurate.

Forefront of Knowledge

“You can find many errors in Audubon, mostly based on his misconceptions, because he was at the forefront of knowledge,” said Peterson, the author of numerous guides for bird watchers. “But that is understandable. That’s no criticism of Audubon.”

Many of his mistakes, said Peterson, were simply identifying young or female birds as new species.

Audubon arrived in the United States in 1803, the year that the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the nation, adding vast tracts of uncharted wilderness. He failed in business, apparently devoting more time to his passion for sketching nature than to worldly affairs.

In 1820, he abandoned himself entirely to birds, wandering south to Key West and as far north as Labrador. He traveled by raft down the Mississippi, but never ventured more than a few miles west of it.