John James Audubon
Artist and Naturalist
September 17, 2010 through January 9, 2011
Art and science come together at Lakeview Museum this Fall in a special exhibition of original prints, watercolors and oil paintings by American artist and naturalist, John James Audubon (1785-1851). His monumental four-volume Birds of America, for which he is best known and which forms the nucleus of the exhibition, is considered the greatest work of American wildlife art ever created. It forever changed the study of natural history and established the young country as a source of creative ability.
Audubon revered nature as few Americans before him had, and recognized that the westward expansion of the young nation would destroy many of the habitats and species that set this continent apart from the others. One of many motivations behind his efforts to document every type of bird in the United States was a desire to document species that he realized were being destroyed, even during his lifetime.
The publication consumed 18 years of his life, require lengthy separations from his beloved wife and two sons, and take him more miles across this continent than nearly any other person of his day. Audubon sought out the finest specimens of each species, which he then presented as typical. He knew his birds from lengthy field studies, and whereas his predecessors depicted birds in static profile posed before blank backgrounds, Audubon positioned his birds as if in flight, feeding or fighting with another bird. He placed them in dynamic, expressive poses amongst the plants and settings in which he had observed them. He drew the birds “in the size of life,” which at times required ingenious positioning to fit the largest birds on a single sheet of paper.
The final product consisted of 435 prints. By combining more than one bird on each plate, and by placing more than one species together on the later plates, the work presents 1,065 birds of 489 species. The exhibition at Lakeview Museum includes 64 plates, representing all four volumes.
Audubon and his sons worked on several additional natural history publications, including reduced-size versions of Birds of America and a comprehensive survey of American mammals with four feet, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. All of these works are represented in the museum exhibition, along with nine original oil paintings, watercolors and drawings by Audubon.
The exhibit comes from the John James Audubon Museum in Henderson, Kentucky, and includes numerous personal artifacts such as the artist’s seal ring with a relief impression of a wild turkey, a life mask, and a silver goblet. Together the artworks and objects in this exhibition offer an unparalleled glimpse into the life and work of this prolific and highly influential artist and naturalist. His ability to present the birds as sentient beings has enriched the worlds of both art and science immeasurably.
