North Carolina Museum of Art

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SELECTIONS FROM THE BIRDS OF AMERICA BY JOHN JAMES AUDUBON
Through December 1, 2002

Facts at a Glance | About the Exhibition

Exhibition Facts at a Glance & Related Events

Description
In 1838, noted ornithologist and author John James Audubon (1785–1851) completed his monumental four-volume The Birds of America, a decade-long publication project. Documenting all the known birds of North Audubon's Carolina Parrot America in life-sized paintings, the books represent a landmark event in both publishing and natural history. Since 1846, the State of North Carolina has owned one of the fewer than 200 sets of The Birds of America known to exist today; the volumes originally were housed in the State Library but were transferred to the North Carolina Museum of Art in 1974.

Contents
The exhibition will include approximately 20 hand-colored prints from The Birds of America, a selection unbound from the folios, cleaned and framed by the Museum, as well as two of the double-elephant folios of the four-volume set. Featured in the show are favorite images including the Carolina Parrot, Trumpeter Swan, Snowy Heron or White Egret, Wild Turkey and Vigor's Warbler. Because of light sensitivity, these prints are seldom exhibited. For this exhibition, many of the works are undergoing conservation treatment, and information on these treatments and the need for further conservation work is included in the galleries.

Curator
Huston Paschal, associate curator of modern art

Organizer and Sponsors
The exhibition was organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art. Presenting sponsor for the exhibition is Clancy & Theys. Support for the exhibition has also been provided by Tru Vue through a donation of anti-reflective acrylic glazing. Other support from state funds and private donations is administered by the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation.

Educational Resources
A slide program on The Birds of America and the Museum's CD-ROM Audubon's Birds of the Carolinas are available for loan to school groups and other organizations. Call 919.839.6262, ext. 2144.

Additionally, the CD-ROM is available in the Collection Connection, the Museum's computer learning center, and can be purchased in the Museum Store.

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About the Exhibition

Rare prints from John James Audubon's The Birds of America are on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art through December 1. Part of the Museum's permanent collection, this selection of prints has been featured in only three previous exhibitions over the last quarter-century, and the folios have been on view only once before, nearly a decade ago. The exhibition, featuring approximately 20 prints from The Birds of America, coincides with the centennial of the formation of the Audubon Society of North Carolina in 1902.

Included in the exhibition are prints such as the Wild Turkey, the Carolina Parrot, the Trumpeter Swan, the Snowy Heron or White Egret and the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. The selection on view was unbound from the folios years ago, and has recently been cleaned and reframed by the Museum. Because the prints are susceptible to fading caused by exposure to light, they are rarely displayed in the galleries.

With The Birds of America, noted ornithologist and artist John James Audubon (1785 - 1851) completed a project that began some 20 years before: publishing in book form life-sized portrayals of every species of bird in North America.

Audubon broke from the practice of recording wildlife from stuffed examples and established a new approach to documentation. Sharing the reverence for nature of his contemporaries the Hudson River School painters, Audubon moved from the tradition of isolating birds in stiff profile and instead portrayed them in their natural habitats. He completed his first sketch in watercolor and then combined the watercolor with pencil, pastel, ink, oil, crayon and/or egg white to produce the specialized texture and colors he desired for each bird. Addressing the meticulousness of his artistic approach, Audubon wrote in his Ornithological Biography (a companion to The Birds of America): "Doubtless, kind reader, you will say, while looking at the seven figures of Parakeets that I spared not my labour. I never do, so anxious am I to promote your pleasure."

Publishing The Birds of America was a project of equal magnitude to the fieldwork. Unable to convince an American publisher to accept the project, Audubon contracted with Robert Havell in London to undertake a complicated process involving etching, aquatint and engraving with hand coloring to accomplish what Audubon had in mind. To depict the birds life-sized, Havell printed The Birds of America on oversized "double-elephant" sheets of paper, measuring 29 inches by 40 inches. In all, the 435-plate folio took 12 years to complete, from 1827 to 1838. Over this period, Audubon sold the publication to the public through a subscription system, with Audubon's Wild Turkey subscribers receiving five plates at a time over the 12-year period or the entire series bound into four volumes at the project's conclusion. At the time of publication, the price in the U.S. for a complete bound set was $1,000. In March 2000, Christie's auctioned a bound set of The Birds of America for $8.8 million, setting a world's record for the auction of any printed book.

In 1846, the State of North Carolina purchased the double-elephant folio at the request of Governor William A. Graham and with the help of Joseph Green Cogswell, celebrated librarian and bibliographer who was the headmaster of the Episcopal School for Boys in Raleigh from 1834 to 1836. Cogswell, then living in New York, found The Birds of America and purchased the work for the state for $650, a reduced amount probably due to the fact that two of the plates were missing. The volumes remained at the State Library until 1974, when they were transferred to the Museum. Since that time, the Museum has located replacements for the two missing plates to complete the folio.

Years ago, the Museum began conservation work on the folio by unbinding a small group of plates, surface-cleaning them and framing them. These prints have recently undergone further conservation treatments in preparation for this exhibition, and the prints on view are glazed with anti-reflective acrylic sheets provided by Tru Vue.

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