John James Audubon Posters Prints Fine Art

Audubon Warbler Art Print

Louisiana Heron Art Print

American Robin Art Print

Blue Crane or Heron

Cardinal Grosbeak Art Print

American Flamingo Art Print

Mallard Duck Art Print

Carolina Parrot Art Print

Louisiana Tanager, Scarlet Tanager

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

Ruff-Necked Hummingbird

Blue Jay Art Print

Long Billed Curlew

Least Bittern Art Print

Selby's Flycatcher Art Print

In France, through the disorganized and dangerous years of the French Revolution, Audubon grew up and developed into a fine-looking, excitable, and social young man. He played flute as well as violin, learned to ride, fence, and as dancing. He was healthy and an avid walker, enjoying wandering around the forest, frequently bringing back natural oddities he had picked up along the way. Items such as birds' eggs and nests came home with him and from these he created rough sketches. His father's designs were at first for his son to take up a profession as mariner. As a result of his father's wishes, when he was 12, Audubon enrolled in a military institution and was placed in the position of a cabin boy. He promptly discovered that he was quite sensitive to seasickness, an had no aptitude for math or navigation. Having failed the officer's qualification test, Audubon's naval vocation was abandoned. He was cheerfully returned to land and researching the fields once more, with his focus placed on the bird life around him.

In 1803, as the Napoleonic Wars heated up, John's father found a fake passport for him to journey to America in order to deflect being drafted into military service. When he arrived in New York City, Audubon contracted yellow fever. The sea captain directed him to a boarding house run by Quaker women, an action which averting possible fatal bleeding by a doctor, and the Quaker woman nursed him to health. She as well instructed in him the singular Quaker style of English, a style which made common practice of using "thee" and "thou". After his recovery, John, accompanied by the Quaker family's attorney, traveled to the Audubon family farm near Philadelphia. The 284 acre homestead, purchased with funds out of the sale of his father's sugar plantation and set on the Perkiomen Creek was only a couple of miles from Valley Forge. He settled with the tenants in a small Eden. While he explored and studied his new his environment, he rapidly found out the ornithologist's decree. There were also lead mines located on the property which his father desired be commercially developed, as the metal was marketable due to the fact that lead was crucial part of making bullets. Developing the lead mines and would allow for his son to have a productive business.

Canvas Backed Duck

Roseate Spoonbill Art Print

Common American Swan

Wild Turkey Art Print

Gray Tyrant Art Print

Vigor's Warbler Art Print

Black-Billed Cuckoo Art Print

American Crossbill Art Print

Florida Jay Art Print

Carolina Pigeon or Turtle Dove

Purple Heron Art Print

Mallard Duck Art Print

Summer Red Bird

Blue Grosbeak

Pipiry Flycatcher

Audubon went looking to purchase a horse for himself, and on this trip encountered his neighbor William Bakewell, who owned several abundant acres known as Fatland Ford. John would marry Bakewell's daughter Lucy 5 years later. He and Lucy shared many mutual pastimes, and soon started to pass time together, savoring the countryside life and exploring the natural world about them.

Audubon begin to examine American birds from almost the beginning of his arrival on the farmland. He had a goal of drawing his bird discoveries in a more true-to-life style than they were frequently rendered during this period. He set about lco-ordinating what would be the first acknowledged bird-banding on the continent, and to accomplish this he fastened yarn to the legs of Eastern Phoebes that he had observed came back to the same nesting areas year to year. Audubon also started sketching and painting birds, as well as recording behavior patterns they displayed. Once while coming back from a winter hunting outing, Audubon fell into a hole in the frozen stream. Fortunately he discovered an escape in the dark ice, but as a result caught a serious fever. He was nursed and recuperated back to health at Fatland Ford with Lucy at hand. Taking a chance that he may be caught in a military draft, in 1080 Audubon went back to France in order tp visit his father to ask permission to wed Lucy as well as to talk over family business projects. While in France he encountered naturalist Dr. Charles-Marie D'Orbigny, who helped Audubon to better taxidermy talents and instructed him in practicing a more scientific research processes. During his return voyage back to America, his ship was caught by an English privateer but Audubon, as well as some gold coins he had concealed, endured the skirmish.

He continued his bird research following his return , and coupled with this began energetically to produce a personal nature museum. This action had possibly been inspired by the distinguished museum of natural history of Charles Wilson Peale in Philadelphia, whose bird displays were viewed as being scientifically progressive for the era. Audubon's nature room was full of birds' eggs, stuffed raccoons as well as opossums, fish, snakes, and additional animals. By this time John had grown quite adept at specimen preparedness as well as taxidermy.

When his agreed, Audubon sold a portion of the farm on which the house as well as mine both sat, but he held back part of the land for investing. The sale was done after after determining the mining business as too high-risk. He then traveled to New York to learn the import-export business, intending to learn a business which could support his marriage to Lucy. Mr. Bakewell held doubts about John and required a firm vocation from the "idle" Frenchman prior to letting his daughter marry.

Sending trade goods before him, Audubon began a general store in Louisville, Kentucky, located in the most significant river port from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. In 1808, six months after getting to Kentucky, he wed Lucy. He had again taken up the habit of sketching bird specimens once more. With his drawing, Audubon frequently set fire his previous attempts to coerce persistent improvement. He as well made careful field records to document his illustrations. Audubon's company was enduring, but it was not prospering due to President Thomas Jefferson's recent embargo of British and French trade. In 1810, Audubon relocated his company to the less competitive Henderson, Kentucky district and the couple settled in an deserted log cabin. In the fields and woods Audubon no more wore his dandy French hunting apparel, but now donned more characteristic frontier garments as well as moccasins, looking more and more like an American frontiersman.

He oftentimes went on hunting and fishing trips to feed the family, as business had been sluggish. During a prospecting trip downriver with a cargo of trade goods, Audubon connected up with native American Shawnee and Osage hunting group, picking up their techniques, drawing specimens by the fire, and eventually separating "like brethren". Contrary to the dominating climate of the era, Audubon had great regard for native Americans and their living with nature. Audubon as well greatly respected the skill of Kentucky riflemen and their shooting competitions, and also the "regulators", citizen law officers that attended to justice for the Kentucky frontier. In his traveling records, he states that he had ran across Daniel Boone.

Audubon saw the 1811-1812 earthquakes, which were some the strongest to have hit the mid-continent. He was riding on his horse as the horse abruptly halted with the detection the first tremblings, and Audubon believed a tornado could be coming. The horse sat down and steadied itself when suddenly the land started to shake. Once he got home he discovered no great damage had been caused, but aftershocks carried on for months. Afterward, in a like fashion, again on horseback, he came across a tornado, which he initially believed was a different earthquake. Always the naturalist, he vividly reported this power of nature whose "horrible noise resembled the roar of Niagara" and as it pulled away "the air was filled with an extremely disagreeable sulfurous odor".

Even though their funds were slight and the life more unsophisticated then they had anticipated, the Audubon's began a family. He had two sons: Victor Gifford and John Woodhouse, as well as two daughters that died as infants: Lucy, who survived for 2 years, and also Rose, that lived only a short 9 months. His son's would assist in publishing their fathers works in the future.

On a trip back to Philadelphia during 1812, after the declaration of war with Great Britain by Congress, Audubon abandoned his French citizenship and turned to an American citizen. Once he arrived back home, he found that rodents had consumed his total collection of over two hundred illustrations. Following weeks of depression as well as insomnia, he went for the field once more, driven to reconstruct his drawing collection to a greater level than the one which had been destroyed.

Audubon's intention had been to relocate his company to New Orleans, but the War of 1812 disrupted this plan. He forged a partnership with his brother-in-law to develop their business in Henderson. Through 1812 and the Panic of 1819, times were sound and Audubon purchased land and slaves, set up a flour mill and enjoyed life with his family. However once the perfect period came to abrupt stop, Audubon went bankrupt and was sent to jail for debt. During this period he made small amounts, mainly out of drawing portraits, especially death-bed drawings, a tradition which was widely respected by country people prior to the age of photography.

Following a brief stop in Cincinnati where he was employed as a naturalist as well as taxidermist by a museum, Audubon accompanied by his gun, paintbox, and helper Joseph Mason, journeyed south on the Mississippi. He had arrived at the decision to discover and paint every bird of North America which he intended to ultimately publishing. His goal was to exceed the previous ornithological exercises of poet-naturalist Alexander Wilson, who by happenstance had approached Audubon for a subscription during 1810. Audubon did not admit to Wilson that he too had the equivalent dream. While he could not afford it, Audubon applied Wilson's studies to direct him.

Audubon relocated to New Orleans during the spring of 1821 and dwelt for a period at Barraks St. That summer, he relocated upstream to the Oakley Plantation in the Felicianas to instruct sketching to Eliza Pirrie, a young daughter of the proprietors. The task was perfect for him, while it had been low paying, it allowed him pass most of his time wandering and drawing in the forest. He was at present working on a sketch collection for his upcoming work, Birds of America. He set his sights on a goal of painting a single page daily. As he painted quickly , he realized that his previous art works were of lower caliber than he liked and re-made them. He employed hunters to bring him bird specimens. Audubon began to understand that his selected choice of challenging labor could separate him from his family for months at a time while he traversed the land in search of bird species to draw.

As he wandered to neighboring towns, along with his bird specimen drawings, Audubon created charcoal portraits for $5 apiece and taught drawing lessons. During 1823 he had lessons from John Steen, formerly an instructor of American landscape and history artist Thomas Cole, in oil painting methods. While he did not use oils often in his bird art, Audubon managed some profitable oil portraits for patrons on the Mississippi. Luckily, Lucy would become the constant breadwinner for the pair and their two small sons. Having an education as a teacher, she held lessons in her home for young children, and afterward would become a regional teacher. She and her small children accepted living quarters with a affluent plantation owner in Louisiana.

Audubon came back to Philadelphia during 1824 to look for a publishing house for his bird illustrations. While he gained the acquaintance of Thomas Sully, among the most illustrious portrait artists of the era and a useful friend, but was snubbed, partially due to the fact that he had gained the hostility of a few of the city's major scientists with the Academy of Natural Sciences. He did have oil painting instructions by Sully as well as encountered Charles Bonaparte, who respected his art and suggested that he go to Europe to get his bird illustrations etched.

With the assistance of his wife's backing, Audubon, soon after his forty-first birthday in 1826, brought his increasing drawing collection to England. He set sail out of New Orleans with his portfolio of more than three hundred illustrations bound for Liverpool on a cotton ship. Having letters of entry to leading Englishmen, Audubon was soon brought to their notice,.

The British could not get enough of his pictures of back country America and its natural aspects, so he was able to tour through England and Scotland with his work. Audubon was celebrated as "The American woodsman" and earned sufficient profit to start printing his book the Birds of America. This significant work is made up of of 435 hand-colored, full-size drawings of 497 bird species, created out of engraved copper plates, however it is far from a absolute atlas. North American held just over 700 bird species at the time.