John James Audubon

In long hair and buckskin clothes, John James Audubon looked like other men on the American frontier in the early 1800s. But Audubon had a unique occupation. His work was the lifelike painting of birds and other wildlife in their natural surroundings.

Born on the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo, Audubon was the son of a French trader. He went to school in France, where he learned to paint. In 1803, he came to the uNited DStates to stud farming, but instead spent most of his time in the woods, oobserving and sketching birds and wildlife. Soon Audubon set himself an ambitious goal: to paint America’s bird in realistic settings. He traveled widely searching for birds and painting them. Eventuall, he made New Orleans his home painting portraits to help support his family while continuing to add to his great bird project.

Audubon made the first “banding” experiments on wild birds. He tied threads around their legs when they were babies and later tracked their nesting habits.

No American publisher was interested in Audubon’s work, but a publisher in Scotland recognized his genius. Birds of America was published in four large volumes beginning in 1827. It made Audubon famous. In the 1840s, two volumes of his studies of mammals appeared, adding to his reputation as a superb artist and pioneering naturalist.