Rocky Road: John James Audubon

John James Audubon

In the 1820s, John James Audubon paid a visit to a phrenologist. All the rage at the time, phrenology purported to measure one's character by measuring one's head. Not only did the phrenologist tell Audubon that his skull resembled that of the great painter Raphael, but also that he was steadfast in his devotion to his wife, affectionate with his children and uncommonly generous toward his friends. Audubon was amazed — not to learn these things about himself; he already knew them — but to see that his fine qualities could so quickly and easily be discerned through simple skull measurements.

From Audubon's Elephant by Duff Hart-Davis © The Natural History Museum, London

Audubon may not have lived up to all of the phrenologist's claims, but there can be little doubt about his artistic talent or devotion to his work. Between 1827 and 1838, he published Birds of America in four volumes showing more than 400 subjects. The format, known as "double-elephant" featured plates roughly 25 by 20 inches in size. Audubon wanted to portray his subjects as big as life, which occasionally meant contorting their long necks and long legs to fit the pages.

Audubon was both illegitimate and encouraged to cover up the unfortunate fact, so he occasionally prompted, or at least allowed, rumors of a noble birth. He was actually born in the Caribbean in 1785, but after race relations there deteriorated, Audubon's slave-trading father packed the boy off to France. In 1803, Audubon was sent out of harm's way again, this time to America to avoid Napoleon's recruiters. In the United States, he wandered without direction until finally finding his purpose: to depict wildlife as realistically as possible. Too realistically for some. Readers with delicate sensibilities must have cringed at his excruciatingly detailed description of the contents of a newly dead owl's stomach.

Audubon's life was tinged with irony. Naming himself "the American Woodsman," he often lamented the quick destruction of the wild — so much that he has become an example for modern conservationists. Yet to paint realistic pictures, he had to shoot hundreds of birds. Because he worked in the wilderness for long stretches with no other food source, he had to eat those birds, too. (He recounted one occasion when he drew a live hawk in his kitchen, and the bird's eye "directed towards mine, appeared truly sorrowful." He released the creature as quickly as he could.) And to bring to life a work about American birds, he had to find many of his buyers in Europe. Audubon spent many years in England, where his books were actually printed.

In England and America, Audubon often teetered on the brink of financial ruin. In the early 19th century, publishing a book like Birds of America meant finding subscribers beforehand, and those subscribers might lose interest and pull out of the venture at any time. (Given the project's length and the engravers' varying work standards, many subscribers did just that.) And at the time, bankruptcy meant more than losing one's possessions, it could also mean imprisonment. Audubon escaped debtors' prison but this was largely through enlisting his family. His wife and eldest son dealt with printers, subscribers and various critics while Audubon was off hunting in the wild, and his wife supplemented the family income by teaching. After Audubon's death, she was forced to resume teaching at the age of 70. Not surprisingly, Audubon's long absences and infrequent financial successes strained his marriage. At one point, his wife wrote him that, until he could tell her about something he had accomplished, she didn't much care to see him.

Ornithology was a highly competitive field in the early 19th century, and a few of Audubon's rivals attacked him in print, sometimes viciously. Some of their critiques were answered by his son, and some were answered by quoting the great French naturalist Cuvier's description of his work as "the most magnificent monument that has yet been raised to ornithology."

After Birds of America was completed, Audubon continued traveling, hunting and painting, working on a smaller version of Birds and publishing two volumes on North American quadrupeds. But the hard life he had lived took its toll. Audubon was still a young man by today's standards when he lapsed into senility, resembling, as one friend observed, "a crabbed restless uncontrollable child — worrying and bothering everyone." He was just 65 when he died. Though the man didn't live long, his reputation did. His books were never cheap, but he probably would have been amazed at the value placed on them by modern collectors. In 2002, a Birds of America set sold at auction for $8.8 million.

For more information:
Audubon's Elephant by Duff Hart-Davis
"Audubon: America's Rare Bird" by Richard Rhodes in Smithsonian Magazine, December, 2004 issue
The Great Naturalists edited by Robert Huxley
Visualizations by Martin Kemp
Seen|Unseen by Martin Kemp
The Rarest of the Rare by Pick and Sloan