James Audubon was born on April 26, 1785 on a sugarcane plantation in a French province in Haiti. His mother died only a few month after his birth and he was raised for his first few years by the housekeeper. In 1791, his father moved back to France to escape the unrest of the slave situation in the Caribbean. From an early age, James had a passionate love of birds. His father wrote of him “He would point out the elegant movement of the birds, and the beauty and softness of their plumage. He called my attention to their show of pleasure or sense of danger, their perfect forms and splendid attire. He would speak of their departure and return with the seasons.”
When he was eighteen years old, Audubon boarded a ship for America to escape being conscripted into the Napoleonic Wars. He described New England as paradise; loving to spend his time wandering in the woods, hunting, drawing and observing the wildlife. It was this careful observation that gave his drawings a photo-realistic quality. During these early years in New England, he met and eventually married Lucy Bakewell, who loved to explore and shared many of the same interests. During this time, he honed his artistic skills as well as learning how to collect specimens and taxidermy. He studied the patterns and habits of various birds and other wildlife and eventually opened his own museum with preserved animals set in natural scenes. James and Lucy moved all over the country, often just barely scraping by financially as James chased his dream of compiling a complete anthology which he titled “The birds of Americaâ€. Along the way, he painted portraits and had a succession of different jobs. Lucy was a trained teacher and became the family’s more stable provider. After 14 years of fieldwork and with Lucy’s support, Audubon took his work to England where he was enthusiastically received and able to publish a his work with 435 hand colored plates depicting over 700 species of birds, with pages that measured an impressive 2×3 feet in size. The English press dubbed him “the American Woodsmanâ€.
Audubon’s techniques for painting birds was radically different from common practices at the time. He would first hunt a specimen, killing it with fine shot. Then spend hours preserving and posing it with wire in a natural position. Then he would paint, with layers of watercolor and sometimes gauche or oil paint and pastels. The resulting natural pictures were much more exciting than the typically stiff posed pieces that were common at that time. His “Birds of America†book featured life size birds, with large species crouched onto a page and small ones shown in multiples on a branch or in a natural scene. This gave the reader an intimate feel for what the bird really looked like. James Audubon continued to explore up until he was in his eighties. He died of natural causes on January 27, 1851 at his home in New York.
Today we will use Audubon’s realistic style to create our own natural scenes. Use some of the large paper to create individual pieces. Each child will also receive their own “Field book†which they can keep in their pocket and sketch things they find when they are exploring outside this summer. If they would like to, they can draw in them now or save them for later. Ask students to use the colored pencils to give more detail and interest to their work. Remind them to carefully observe the details in Audubon’s paintings and record them in their own piece.