An Audubon Guide by Scott Bishop

Plate 2

An Audubon Guide

In 1820, John James Audubon (1785–1851) committed himself to creating a book representing all the birds in America in life size. He would spend the next nineteen years of his life realizing the project. In 1839, when the last pages had been printed and handcolored, Audubon had made and sold approximately 200 sets of 435 prints that were bound into four volumes. That same year he published the fifth and final volume of the Ornithological Biography, a text meant to accompany the collection of prints entitled The Birds of America. In the introduction to his Ornithological Biography, dated March 1831, Audubon wrote, “The flowers, plants, or portions of trees which are attached to the principal objects, have been chosen from amongst those in the vicinity of which the birds were found, and not, as some persons thought, the trees or plants upon which they always feed or perch.” His choices were not, of course, random; he often picked the most spectacular plants in the birds’ environments on which to situate them.

Audubon developed the images for his prints, as far as possible, by firsthand observation of the birds in their environments. Sometimes he would work on a composition over several years, as is the case with the Wood Duck, which was begun in Louisiana in 1821. Audubon depicted the flying male separately, pasted it into the composition, and added the female in 1825. The print created from the composition was made in England in 1834. The Ornithological Biography was written in Scotland and England in 1835. By the time Audubon wrote the essay on the wood duck, it had been fourteen years since he had begun the drawing that would become the basis of the print. Even so, in the essay on the wood duck (as in most of the essays),

Fig. 7. John Syme (Scottish, 1795–1861), Portrait of John James Audubon, 1826, oil on canvas. The White House Historical Association (White House Collection).

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Fig. 8. John James Audubon, Cerulean Warbler, 1821, watercolor, graphite, and pastel with touches of black ink and selective glazing on paper, laid on card. Collection of the New York Historical Society. Audubon only partially completed the plant, leaving the top third drawn in with pencil for Havell to complete. Right: Plate 1. Hand-colored print after the original painting above (detail).

Audubon introduced the scene as a single moment: he remembered sitting at the “trunk of a gigantic sycamore.” The construction of the story, like the construction of the image, is a Romantic process of creating an idealized image (or experiential moment) of the American landscape. The written text, which we might mistakenly think of as the Science—as opposed to the Art of the prints—often tries to convey not just a moment that places the reader/viewer in the scene, but a shared moment of Romantic insight. Science and art are not divided in this moment.

Audubon would often use an assistant to paint the plants on which the birds appear. Over the years, he employed a young man named Joseph Mason, his two sons Victor and John Woodhouse Audubon, friend and relative by marriage, Maria Martin, and a landscape artist named George Lehman. Mason had been Audubon’s student, and he was his first assistant, accompanying him on his earliest drawing expedition down the Mississippi River in 1820. They were in Louisiana and traveling to other parts of the Southeast until July 1822. During this time, Mason, an extremely talented artist, contributed the plant portraits to Audubon’s compositions. It is not surprising then, since we are looking at native plants of the Southeast, that Mason can be credited with painting most of the plants represented in this guide.

It is important to understand that The Birds of America is a publication of prints made from original compositions created by Audubon in graphite, pastel, and watercolor. In order to find a printer who was willing and able to take on such a monumental project, Audubon went to Britain. There he first worked with a Scottish printer named William H. Lizars, who produced the first ten prints, and then with a father and son, both named Robert Havell, in London. The younger Havell carried out much of the work, and his master skill is certainly part of what makes Audubon’s prints so artistically successful. Audubon would take his completed paintings of the birds to the Havells, who would engrave, etch, and aquatint the composition on a copper plate and then print it onto high-quality cotton paper in sheets measuring 28 x 39 inches.

After the prints were pulled, watercolorists employed by the Havells would handcolor the prints according to Audubon’s instructions and following his original painting. Customers who subscribed to The Birds of America would receive shipments of five prints at a time, and when they had assembled a complete volume—Audubon also had tables of contents and title pages printed—they would have them bound.

Audubon designed all of the compositions, designated which plants would be represented, and exerted ultimate control over the complex artistic process that created The Birds of America. The native plants pictured in this guide feature some of the Southeast’s most beautiful blooms—the southern magnolia, the

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Mocking Bird, Plate 21 (see page 54)

dogwood, cross vine and trumpet vine, yellow jasmine, oakleaf hydrangea—as well as stately trees—oaks, tulip poplars, the sycamore. These plants are not mere backdrop to the bird portraits; rather they are as in nature, part and parcel of the rich environment Audubon closely observed. For instance, in his description of the mockingbird, he takes one of his more verbose Romantic turns through the environment of Louisiana:

…in a word it is where Nature seems to have paused, as she passed over the Earth, and opening her stores, to have strewed with unsparing hand the diversified seeds from which have sprung all the beautiful and splendid forms which I should in vain attempt to describe, that the Mocking Bird should have fixed its abode, there only that its wondrous song should be heard.

We invite you to use this guide to take a turn through the beautiful grounds of the Davis Arboretum with John James Audubon as your guide.

Scott Bishop

Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art Auburn University

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The Plates

BlUe-gReeN WARBleR, Plate XlIX

American Beautyberry

Callicarpa americana

The raw berries of the American beautyberry, while palatably sweet, are suitable for human consumption only in small amounts because they are astringent. They have been used in jellies, and the roots may be used to make herbal tea. An isolated plant compound, callicarpenal, has reportedly been proven effective in tests as a mosquito repellent. It has been claimed that “fresh, crushed leaves of American beautyberry … keep biting insects away from animals such as horses and mules” (Pons, 2). Perhaps this strategy was used by Audubon and other explorers of the time as they traversed dense forests and bogs. If beautyberry is planted in a favorable site it can reach eight to nine feet in height. There are several specimens in the Davis Arboretum and they make a good understory shrub at the edge of a landscape. The berries are a valuable food source for many bird species and they’ll reward you with new plants as they spread the seeds.

“The plant on which I have figured a male [warbler] is found in Louisiana, growing along the skirts of woods and fences. It is called the Spanish Mulberry. It is an herbaceous perennial plant, attaining a height from four to eight feet. The fruit is eaten by children, but is insipid” (Audubon, Vol. 1, 259).

Following the lead of ornithologist Alexander Wilson, Audubon thought this bird was a blue-green warbler. Actually, it is a cerulean warbler (Dendroica cerulea), a separate species that breeds in northernmost Alabama.

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