John James Audubon
1785 ... 1851 · Louisiana and New York
Biography
Audubon set out to draw every bird in North America at life size. The result was The Birds of America, issued in parts between 1827 and 1838, with 435 hand-colored plates covering 489 species. The sheets are enormous. The paper runs about 26 by 39 inches, which is why collectors call it the double elephant folio.
He shot his birds and wired them into lifelike poses before drawing them. He worked in the field in Louisiana and Kentucky, then hired the London engraver Robert Havell Jr. to turn the watercolors into prints.
The record includes the ugly part. The National Audubon Society, the group that carries his name, has publicly condemned his role in enslaving Black people and in spreading white supremacist ideas. His own letters also opposed abolition. That stays in the record, because the point of this site is real history rather than a cleaned-up version of it.
How John James Audubon Worked
The Great Blue Heron watercolor is a working document, not a tidy finished picture. Audubon painted the bird in Louisiana in 1821. Thirteen years later in London he went back in with oil paint and reworked the foreground, right before Havell engraved it. The sheet carries watercolor, oil, pastel, graphite, gouache, black ink and a piece of collage, layered on paper that was laid down on card. You are looking at one person changing his mind across thirteen years.
What Backs This Record
The preparatory watercolors are held and catalogued by the New-York Historical Society, bought from the artist's widow by public subscription. Each sheet can be matched to its engraved plate in The Birds of America.
Audubon died in 1851 and The Birds of America was issued between 1827 and 1838, so the plates and the watercolors are out of copyright. Check the holding institution's terms for any photograph you want to download.