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The Birds of
America An exhibit of John James Audubon's prints tours Illinois.
STORY BY KATHY ANDREWS
John James Audubon (1785-1851) was perhaps the world's preeminent wildlife artist. During his travels of North America, he painted more than 1,000 species of birds in their natural habitats. Audubon's lifelong passion was the study of nature, and he spent countless hours afield studying birds, their habits and habitats. For much of his life, Audubon's home was in Henderson, Kentucky, where he worked unsuccessfully as a business man. Leaving behind his wife and two young sons, Audubon and a business partner set off in the winter of 1810-1811 to establish a business in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. Waiting for the ice to break on the Mississippi River, they set up camp on the banks of the
John James Audubon's portrait was painted by G. P. A. Healy in 1838. (Photograph courtesy of the Museum of Science, Boston.)
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Cache River, in what is now southern Illinois. Journal entries from this time report rafts of black ducks, green-winged teal, shovelers, pintails and wood ducks, and document a country teeming with raccoon, cougar and wild turkey. Audubon returned to that area during the spring of 1811 to paint wildflowers and birds. "What few people realize is how incredibly supportive Audubon's wife Lucy was of his work," commented Kent Smith, director of art, Illinois State Museum. "He was totally focused on his art and birds, while she cared for their children and ran a school in their home. Not only was she responsible for supporting the family, she underwrote Audubon's expenses while he traveled." The Illinois State Museum Audubon Collection On exhibit throughout the next year is a portion of the Illinois State Museum's collection of Audubon prints. The estate of Judge R. Magoon Barnes gifted a collection of 97 Audubon prints to the Illinois State Museum in 1947. Judge Barnes was a member of the Illinois State Museum Board, editor of a magazine about birds, nests and eggs, and an avid collector of everything avifaunal. In viewing the exhibit during its run at the Southern Illinois Art Gallery, which is located at the Southern Illinois Artisans Shop and Visitors Center, people were quick to notice the striking portrait of Audubon on loan from the Museum of Science, Boston. The artist, G. P. A. Healy, met and painted Audubon while both were living in London. Healy later made his home in Chicago, painting several members of. the Lincoln family and founding what has become The Art Institute of Chicago.
Healy depicts Audubon in his frontier clothing, holding his Pennsylvania rifle and bandoleer, leaning in thoughtful repose against a decaying tree, trillium peeking from under the branches. The American wilderness was the rage of Europe, and Audubon used this wilderness persona to his advantage in
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generating curiosity, interest and sales. The prints in the display are of birds native to Illinois. Labels provide fascinating excerpts directly from Audubon's field diary, published as Ornithological Biographies, a companion publication to his art folio. "The journal entries are interesting from the standpoint of today's ornithologists," remarked Doug Stapleton, exhibition designer for the Illinois State Museum's Chicago Gallery and coauthor of the exhibition brochure. "Audubon's observations were not scientific by our standards, nor were they necessarily impartial. They do provide a sense of drama about the setting the birds were found in, and include some spirited stories of his experiences." Each label also contains current information on the status of each species that was obtained from H. David Bohlen's book. The Birds of Illinois. Smith commented that, "One of the objectives of the exhibition is to show the meeting of the arts and natural history. Using mounted specimens that are in some instances near contemporaries of the prints brings a focus to the fact that Audubon actually saw these birds while in Illinois, and that some species are now rare, or have been lost altogether. For the show, we were able to clean and refurbish some 100-year old taxidermy mounts—like the Carolina parakeet, an extinct species, and the ivory-billed woodpecker, quite possibly extinct." Also on exhibit are books from two of Audubon's contemporaries. Alexander Wilson's book, American Ornithology (1830), is remarkably different in style, with a single bird, usually the more colorful male, drawn without the benefit of detail brought by showing the bird's habits and habitat. In Jacob Henry Studer's book. The Birds of North America (1885 edition), the plates depict birds in their natural habitats, but the art lacks the artistic study of Audubon's work. Studer's work was valued as one of the first readily available books to aid readers in bird identification. Two of the prints on display—the ivory-billed woodpecker and purple martin—are from the original printing of The Birds of America, dating from 1829 and hand-colored in London by Robert Havell and Sons. The other prints were produced by Julius Bien between 1858 and 1860 and are examples of the chromolithography printing process. Chromolithography was the latest color printing technology during the Civil War era; however, economic conditions of the time greatly curtailed use of this technique. "Only in the last couple of years has chromolithography begun to receive the recognition it deserves," Smith explained. "Great skill and attention to detail were required of the printer to produce these images. These chromolithographs, which so closely approximate Audubon's original watercolors, are only now receiving the attention and appreciation they deserve."
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