John James Audubon
1785 -1851
John James Audubon was an American ornithologist, naturalist, hunter, and painter. He painted, catalogued, and described the birds of North America.
Audubon was born in Haiti (then called Saint-Domingue), the illegitimate son of Jean Audubon, a French sea captain and slavemaster, and Jeanne Rabin, Creole slave, a black woman from the Congo. He was first named Jean Rabine after his mother Jeanne Rabine. His father took him to Nantes, France to be raised and adopted by his wife, Anne Moynet. He was formally named Jean-Jacques Fougere Audubon, which he later Americanized. He was educated in Paris, where he took lessons from the French painter Jacques-Louis David.
In 1803, he traveled to the United States to avoid the Napoleonic Wars. He settled at a family farm in Mill Grove, near Philadelphia, where in 1803 he began the study of natural history by conducting the first known bird-banding on the continent: he tied yarn to the legs of Eastern Phoebes and determined that they returned to the same nesting spots year after year. He met and became engaged to his neighbor Lucy Bakewell, whom he married in 1808. He also was drawing and painting birds. In later years he claimed to have hunted in the Appalachians with Daniel Boone.
After years of business success in Pennsylvania and Kentucky, he went bankrupt, pursue nature study and painting more vigorously, and he sailed down the Mississippi, intent on finding and painting all the birds of North America. To draw or paint the birds, he shot them first, using fine shot to prevent them from being torn to pieces. He then used fixed wires to prop them up, restoring a natural position. His paintings of birds are set true-to-life in their natural habitat. This was in stark contrast with the stiff representations of birds by his contemporaries, such as Alexander Wilson.
He sought a publisher for his birds in Philadelphia but was rebuffed. He didn't have very much luck selling them in America, but in 1826 he set sail with his portfolio to Liverpool. The British couldn't get enough of images of backwoods America and he was an instant success. He was lionized as "The American Woodsman" and raised enough money to publish his Birds of America. This consisted of hand-colored, life-size prints made from engraved plates measuring around 39 by 26 inches. It is often regarded as the greatest picture book ever produced. Audubon was elected a fellow of London's Royal Society.
During that time, Audubon bought an estate on the Hudson River, now Audubon Park. In 1842, he published a popular edition of Birds of America in the United States. His final work was on mammals, the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, which was written in collaboration with his good friend Rev. John Bachman who supplied much of the scientific text. It was completed by his sons and son-in-law and published posthumously.
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