Audubon's Birds of America

Audubon's Birds of America

A monumental work from the pioneer and master of bird painting. All 435 paintings in a large-format edition.

A pioneer in ornithology and an exceptional artist who took the painting of nature to a new level, Audubon was one of the earliest chroniclers of America's wildlife. The large-format 'Baby Elephant Folio' edition is an awe-inspiring depiction of his life's work.

'I drew, I looked on nature only; my days were happy beyond human conception'

A Painter's Vision

When the young Jean Audubon conceived the grandiose dream of painting all the birds of America, it was little wonder that business associates complained he was impractical. Since large swathes of America were still unexplored, who knew how many new species of birds were to be found? Or, more importantly, who would want to buy paintings of them? No publisher in New York or Philadelphia was prepared to invest money in such a book. Despite the obstacles, Audubon continued painting, and then travelled to Britain looking for backers. With his carefully cultivated image of a long-haired 'woodsman' wearing buckskin, he captivated salons across Europe and quickly raised subscriptions to have his work engraved and published.

A Pioneer in Art and Ornithology

Audubon was the first person known to have used 'bird-banding' in order to trace whether birds would return to the same sites year after year and he was equally imaginative when it came to finding ways of representing the birds artistically. Like all 'naturalists' of the time, Audubon shot the birds he painted, but his innovation was to wire his specimen instantly into the pose in which he had seen it and paint there and then.

Living, Iconic Art

Most painters worked from stuffed specimens in museums and the results were equally stiff and lifeless. Audubon's paintings brought the birds out from behind their glass cases into their natural habitats and landscapes. Each plate is a masterpiece of drama and action, aesthetically composed, with every attention given to details of habitat, plumage and colouring. Audubon was both lucky and astute in his selection of Robert Havell to etch his plates from the original watercolours. Havell was a master craftsman and a skilled artist in his own right with a perfectionist's eye for detail – a combination that resulted in an extraordinarily high quality of reproduction.

Audubon was obsessed with shooting birds in his youth, but as he grew older he recognised that species were becoming less numerous and made the connection between their disappearance and the encroachments made on natural habitats by man. Admiration of birds led to awareness of their plight. Now regarded as the father of American conservation, he was the inspiration for the National Audubon Society - the foremost private conservation group in the US, protecting thousands of species through their sanctuaries.

A superb edition fully brought up-to-date

Although many attempts have been made to recreate Audubon's master-piece, none of them match the quality, size, fidelity and extraordinary value of this Abbeville edition. All 435 of Audubon's hand-coloured engravings have been reproduced from the original plates of the National Audubon Society's archival copy of the rare Double Elephant Folio. The 'Baby Elephant' format is an impressive 15" x 11¾" with double pages giving full expression to the many large-scale landscape plates, while smaller birds are presented at life-size.

The renowned American ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson reorganised the original engravings into a modern phylogenetic order and brought scientific and common names up to date, while still including those used by Audubon. Not only does it make searching for birds easier, but it allows readers to see Audubon's artistic handling of related species. Peterson's fascinating introduction places Audubon in the context of the history of American ornithological art while his extensive annotations correct errors discovered by later scholarship.