Antiques.("The Birds of America (1827-1838)" by John James Audubon)(Biography)

When I think of these times, and call back to my mind the grandeur and beauty of those almost uninhabited shores; when I picture to myself the dense and lofty summits of the forest ... unmolested by the axe of the settler ... when I see that no longer any Aborigines are to be found there, and that the vast herds of elks, deer and buffaloes which once pastured on these hills and in these valleys ... have ceased to exist; when I reflect that all this grand portion of our Union, instead of being in a state of nature, is now more or less covered with villages, farms, and towns, where the din of hammers and machinery is constantly heard ... when I remember that these extraordinary changes have all taken place in the short period of twenty years, I pause, wonder, and, although I know all to be fact, can scarcely believe its reality.

John James Audubon, "The Ohio," Ornithological Biography, 1831-1839

John James Audubon has contributed more to the art of painting birds than anyone before or since. No one before him rendered birds on such a heroic scale or recorded so many animated likenesses of so many American birds in their different habitats (see the cover). He not only left an intimately observed record of the natural world but he did so with a supreme command of design, composition, and coloring.

Audubon roamed the woods, the swamps, and the coasts of his adopted land with all the freedom of the wild creatures he stalked. He proclaimed himself the kind of self-reliant American that Emerson and Thoreau idealized. In "The Prairie," Audubon wrote: "My napsack, my gun, and nay dog, were all I had for baggage and company."

Wishing to share his vision and his accomplishment, he commissioned copies of his paintings to be made--for the most part by the English engraver Robert Havell Jr.--and published in his monumental double elephant folio edition of The Birds of America (1827-1838).

When he arrived in England, the romantic myth of the American trapper-scout living according to natural law had been popularized by the first ...