Audubon

Audubon borough (1990 pop. 9,205), Camden co., SW N.J., a suburb of Camden; inc. 1905. Audubon is mostly residential. It was named after John James Audubon , the ornithologist, who studied the birds of the area in 1829.

Audubon, John James (1785–1851), artist, naturalist, and ornithologist.Born in Haiti, the illegitimate son of a French naval officer and a Haitian chambermaid, Audubon grew up in France and moved to Philadelphia in 1803. In 1807 he relocated to Kentucky and became a shopkeeper, and in 1808 married Lucy Bakewell. He neglected business in favor of drawing and studying local birds, however, and after a series of setbacks found himself bankrupt and in debtor's prison in 1819.

In 1820 he moved to Cincinnati to paint portraits and work as a taxidermist for the Western Museum. Four years later he went to Philadelphia to seek funding for an ambitious project to document all known American birds. He failed, but found success after traveling to England in 1826. Delighting his European patrons, Audubon played the part of the American woodsman with relish, slicking his hair with bear grease, wearing rough wool pants and a buckskin jacket, and claiming to have hunted with Daniel Boone.

His four‐volume masterwork, The Birds of America (1827–1838), combined unprecedented scope with unusual quality of execution and detail. Printed on “double elephant” folio pages (40 × 30 inches), Audubon's life‐size, full‐color engravings of 435 species were immediately hailed as a masterpiece in both Europe and America. In 1838 he published a popular octavo version of Birds in the United States and later, with his son John Wodehouse Audubon and John Bachman, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (1842–1854).

Although self‐taught, Audubon was a great stylist, combining skilled draftsmanship based on extensive field and laboratory work with an awareness of profile and motion that made the work of other ornithologist‐artists seem stiff and inert. Unparalleled in his accomplishment, Audubon was praised by the Parisian scientist Georges Cuvier for having created “the greatest monument ever erected by art to nature.”

Bibliography

Alice Ford , John James Audubon: A Biography, 1988.
Shirley Streshinsky , Audubon: Life and Art in the American Wilderness, 1993.

Christopher W. Wells

Audubon, John James (1785–1851). American painter-naturalist. Born at Haiti, the illegitimate son of a chambermaid and a French sea captain, he was brought up in France and received instruction in drawing from J.-L. David. He moved to the USA in 1803 to avoid conscription in Napoleon's army and lived as a naturalist, hunter, and taxidermist, also earning some money as a portraitist and drawing master. His combined interests in art and ornithology grew into a plan to make a complete pictorial record of all the bird species of North America. Unable to find a publisher in America, Audubon spent three years in England (1826–9) and found an engraver and publisher in the London firm of Robert Havell and Son. His The Birds of America, from Original Drawings, with 435 Plates Showing 1,065 Figures appeared in four volumes of hand-tinted aquatints (1827–38) and now ranks among the most famous and prized books of the world. It was followed by The Viviparous Quadrupeds of America (1845–8), which was completed by his son John Woodhouse Audubon (1812–62) after the master's sight failed in 1846. His other son, Victor Gifford Audubon (1809–60), also assisted his father. Many of Audubon's original drawings are in the New-York Historical Society. See also Bewick