John James Audubon set the standards for all bird artists coming after him. He is most famous for his Birds of America which is a collection of 435 life-size pictures of birds. He discovered 25 new species of birds and developed an original style of painting the birds which shows them in their natural habitat.
Audubon was born in 1785 on Haiti in the Carribean. His father was a French naval captain and he took Audubon back to France at the age of six. He grew up in a large house in Nantes. He had private tutors and his father encouraged his interest of birds. Audubon loved birds and said: “I felt an intimacy with them…bordering on frenzy [that] must accompany my steps through life.”
In 1803 the Napoleonic wars broke out and Audubon’s father sent him to a family estate in Pennslyvania. He met Lucy Bakewell who lived in a nearby estate. Aububon went back to France to ask his father if he could marry Lucy, and whilst he was there he learned taxidermy.
His father approved so Audubon went back to America, married Lucy and started a trading business along the Mississippi river. But he had not lost his interest in wildlife. He kept on drawing birds and made his own natural history museum which included birds’ eggs and stuffed animals. It was at this time he travelled and came up with the idea of painting all the birds in America.
Unfortunately, his businesses failed and rats ate his collection of 200 drawings whilst he was away at the frontier. Also his friend smashed his violin whilst trying to catch a bat with it. Despite all this, Audubon decided now was the time to draw every bird in America. He travelled the country and lived in the wild, sketching and hunting along the way. His wife supported the family by teaching the children in the nearby estates and he made some money by painting protraits and teaching art.
In 1826 he went to England and was an immediate success. People were captured by the birds from the American west and he could sell many prints of his art. Finally he was making money from his bird drawings. He returned to America and continued his travels and drawings until his health began to fail and he died in 1851. He is buried in Manhattan, New York.
Audubon created a technique to draw birds in a lively and dramatic way. First he observed them in the wild and got to know their habits and habitats, then he shot them and put wire in their stuffed bodies so he could bend them in different poses. He would spend days drawing them in different poses before making the final picture. The picture usually showed the bird feeding or hunting and in its natural surroundings. He used watercolour for his paintings but sometimes added pastel, chalk and gouache.
I like Audubon’s artwork because I like birds and I also like the precision and the fact that his drawings are accurate but not static. For my art project I would like to do a painting in the same style as Audubon’s.