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John James Audubon
John James Audubon came to America as a dapper eighteen-year-old eager to make his fortune. He had a talent for drawing and an interest in birds, and he would spend the next thirty-five years traveling to the remotest regions of his new country–often alone and on foot–to render his avian subjects on paper. The works of art he created gave the world its idea of America. They gave America its idea of itself.
Here Richard Rhodes vividly depicts Audubon’s life and career: his epic wanderings; his quest to portray birds in a lifelike way; his long, anguished separations from his adored wife; his ambivalent witness to the vanishing of the wilderness. John James Audubon: The Making of an American is a magnificent achievement.
Here Richard Rhodes vividly depicts Audubon’s life and career: his epic wanderings; his quest to portray birds in a lifelike way; his long, anguished separations from his adored wife; his ambivalent witness to the vanishing of the wilderness. John James Audubon: The Making of an American is a magnificent achievement.
544 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
About the author
Richard Rhodes
114 books563 followersRichard Lee Rhodes is an American journalist, historian, and author of both fiction and non-fiction (which he prefers to call "verity"), including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), and most recently, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2007). He has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation among others.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
June 14, 2017
I get caught up in the belief that I am going to enjoy true-adventure stories, but they usually let me down. I get that John James Audubon was an amazing individual who did something that set him apart from other explorers; I just don’t need a five-hundred-page account of where he was when he painted every bird he ever found. The story is lacking something and needs to be sexier.
May 19, 2020
I've always been a big fan of Audubon's birds (we have some of his prints on our dining room walls), and I always enjoy reading books about any kind of artist and their craft, so I was excited to read this book.
Sometimes it seems like there's a little too much information about every single place he went in his early adult life, and I wish he had used that space to talk more about the birds and the art. But overall it was a good book that I'm glad I read. A good look at how his art came to be, a good look at Louisville and Kentucky in the early 19th century, a good look at some of the history of birding.
Filled with some great stories, like the thousands of swallows in the sycamore tree, the New Madrid earthquakes, how his career took off in Europe while everyone in his home country couldn't seem to care less (at least at first), and the story of his golden eagle plate. His marriage with Lucy gets quite a bit of space, and the author seems to gloss over Audubon's responsibility for some of their disputes.
Note - the kindle version of this is embarrassing. Words are jammed together, and there is no bookmarked table of contents or chapter list.
Sometimes it seems like there's a little too much information about every single place he went in his early adult life, and I wish he had used that space to talk more about the birds and the art. But overall it was a good book that I'm glad I read. A good look at how his art came to be, a good look at Louisville and Kentucky in the early 19th century, a good look at some of the history of birding.
Filled with some great stories, like the thousands of swallows in the sycamore tree, the New Madrid earthquakes, how his career took off in Europe while everyone in his home country couldn't seem to care less (at least at first), and the story of his golden eagle plate. His marriage with Lucy gets quite a bit of space, and the author seems to gloss over Audubon's responsibility for some of their disputes.
Note - the kindle version of this is embarrassing. Words are jammed together, and there is no bookmarked table of contents or chapter list.
March 3, 2008
As a birder, I've always known that we owed a lot to John James Audubon. But until I read this biography, I hadn't realized quite how much American ornithological history owes to one man's quest to document the species of birds found in this country (or at least, once did).
This book was given to me by a friend almost a year ago, and it took me this long to give it the attention it deserved. The biography covers the life - and times - of John James Audubon, author and illustrator of the "Birds of America" book that would define the species that existed in the times that a new country was forming.
Not only does it give us a detailed look at Audubon's life - French ex-patriot, store owner, husband, adventurer, father, writer, ornithologist and artist - but it gives us a good look at the time period in which he lived, framing it in his quest to produce the massive tome of illustrations, but still giving us valuable insight into how the world was - particularly the fledgling United States - in those early years.
Author Richard Rhodes does a remarkable job at giving the reader a solid and thorough accounting of Audubon's remarkable life story, starting with his illegitimate birth to his rise to become the most famous birder in the world. Through a combination of thorough research and remarkable records of letters, journals and thoughts from contemporaries, we get to see into the mind of this artist as he took a remarkable habit and turned it into an art and then into a lifestyle.
Perhaps just as important as the story of Audubon's own life is the story of the world around him at the time, and his views on that world. We learn what it was like in the late 1700s in America, as the populace struggled to define themselves and survive the frontier they were trying to tame; we see the world of the expanding U.S., seeing the territories of Kentucky, Louisiana and the rest through the stories and records of a remarkable man. And interestingly, we get to see what might have been the first conservationist, as Audubon looked upon the 'advancement' of the American peoples at the expense of the natural settings and creatures he loved so much.
No review in this space can truly grasp the enormity of the information captured in this book. Part biography, part natural history and part world history, "JJA: The Making of an American" is a book that will appeal to birders, obviously, but will also find a special place with anyone who loves to learn about where we came from as an American people.
This book was given to me by a friend almost a year ago, and it took me this long to give it the attention it deserved. The biography covers the life - and times - of John James Audubon, author and illustrator of the "Birds of America" book that would define the species that existed in the times that a new country was forming.
Not only does it give us a detailed look at Audubon's life - French ex-patriot, store owner, husband, adventurer, father, writer, ornithologist and artist - but it gives us a good look at the time period in which he lived, framing it in his quest to produce the massive tome of illustrations, but still giving us valuable insight into how the world was - particularly the fledgling United States - in those early years.
Author Richard Rhodes does a remarkable job at giving the reader a solid and thorough accounting of Audubon's remarkable life story, starting with his illegitimate birth to his rise to become the most famous birder in the world. Through a combination of thorough research and remarkable records of letters, journals and thoughts from contemporaries, we get to see into the mind of this artist as he took a remarkable habit and turned it into an art and then into a lifestyle.
Perhaps just as important as the story of Audubon's own life is the story of the world around him at the time, and his views on that world. We learn what it was like in the late 1700s in America, as the populace struggled to define themselves and survive the frontier they were trying to tame; we see the world of the expanding U.S., seeing the territories of Kentucky, Louisiana and the rest through the stories and records of a remarkable man. And interestingly, we get to see what might have been the first conservationist, as Audubon looked upon the 'advancement' of the American peoples at the expense of the natural settings and creatures he loved so much.
No review in this space can truly grasp the enormity of the information captured in this book. Part biography, part natural history and part world history, "JJA: The Making of an American" is a book that will appeal to birders, obviously, but will also find a special place with anyone who loves to learn about where we came from as an American people.
October 16, 2016
I sometimes have trouble with nonfiction, but this book is well-written and thoroughly entertaining. It is a story not only of an extraordinary man and his extraordinary wife, Lucy, but a real tale of early America. The reader gets an intimate view as to the trials and tribulations of a person living in the early 1800s, beset by risks physical and financial. The effects of disease and lack of medical advancement are quite different. The state of dentistry was rather appalling.
It's also interesting to see how much activity was uncontrolled and unregulated. There are many scenes of parties travelling up and down the river, feeding themselves on whatever they could shoot. I can't imagine someone getting away with that today. Also, currency was not uniform at that time, and laws were local enough that if someone wanted to abscond with one's property, it was pretty easy for them to escape the law just by leaving the area.
During the course of Audubon's life, America changed a lot as it became more populated and developed, and as species were slaughtered by overhunting and by habitat destruction. It's apparent that people thought that the quantity of these species (such as the passenger pigeon and the bison) would never be exhausted, which we know in hindsight was wrong. This book also chronicles the decline of many of the Indian populations.
I'm obviously not good at summarizing things, but I do highly recommend this book, both as a biography and as a picture of the era.
It's also interesting to see how much activity was uncontrolled and unregulated. There are many scenes of parties travelling up and down the river, feeding themselves on whatever they could shoot. I can't imagine someone getting away with that today. Also, currency was not uniform at that time, and laws were local enough that if someone wanted to abscond with one's property, it was pretty easy for them to escape the law just by leaving the area.
During the course of Audubon's life, America changed a lot as it became more populated and developed, and as species were slaughtered by overhunting and by habitat destruction. It's apparent that people thought that the quantity of these species (such as the passenger pigeon and the bison) would never be exhausted, which we know in hindsight was wrong. This book also chronicles the decline of many of the Indian populations.
I'm obviously not good at summarizing things, but I do highly recommend this book, both as a biography and as a picture of the era.
December 8, 2009
This review ran in the San Jose Mercury News on October 17, 2004:
John James Audubon produced his paintings of the birds of America by killing, skinning and dissecting thousands of them. Those astonishing images of birds full of life -- flying, fighting, mating, preening, feeding their young -- were achieved by mounting dead birds on a contraption of his own devising: ''Sharpened wires embedded in a board onto which he could impale his fresh specimens in lifelike attitudes,'' as Richard Rhodes describes it.
We cringe at facts like that, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone who reads Rhodes' brilliant new book quits the Audubon Society and joins People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals instead. But though it may be a sin to kill a mockingbird, how else are you going to depict a mockingbird accurately if you have no cameras, no color film, no telephoto lenses?
Rhodes' marvelously detailed and readable new biography lets us see anew what an extraordinary achievement Audubon's ''Birds of America'' was. Audubon's contributions to art and science not only earned him recognition as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London -- only the second American (the first was Benjamin Franklin) to achieve that honor -- but also, Rhodes points out, directly influenced Charles Darwin.
One of the revelations provided by history and biography is how the world changes. Rhodes' account of the life and times of Audubon is not only a portrait of an amazing man, it's also a look at untamed America in the early 19th century, a journey into a wilderness that was vanishing before Audubon's own eyes -- so fast that in 1833, 30 years after he first set foot in America, he wrote, ''Nature herself is perishing.''
When the 18-year-old Frenchman came to the United States in 1803, he was only a few years younger than the country itself. He came from a country that had recently experienced the grisly turmoil of the Reign of Terror, and that now threatened to draft him into the army Napoleon was assembling to conquer Europe. France had a population of 27 million; there were only 6 million people in the United States, Rhodes tells us, ''two-thirds of them living within fifty miles of Atlantic tidewater.''
What better place for a man to reinvent himself? And Audubon was already adept at reinvention: He was born out of wedlock to a chambermaid on his father's sugar plantation in what's now Haiti, and until he was 8 years old his name was Jean Rabin. When his father's wife agreed to raise the child, he was renamed Jean-Jacques Fougere Audubon. He later began calling himself John James LaForest Audubon, and throughout his life he made up stuff about himself: that he had studied with the artist Jacques-Louis David, for example, or that he was born in Louisiana.
Audubon's fibs have not endeared him to some people. Rhodes quotes, for example, the art historian-critic Robert Hughes' characterization of Audubon as ''self-inflated, paranoid and a bit of a thug.'' But Rhodes presents us with a very different Audubon, one who was many things: a handsome, charismatic, driven artist; an intrepid woodsman; a meticulous researcher; a perfectionist; an extraordinarily successful self-promoter; and a devoted husband and father.
Audubon's was an epic life. Slipping free of the constraints and bloody conflicts of early 19th-century Europe and the raw new civilization taking hold in the eastern United States, he made his way into the wilderness of the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. He married a woman nearly as intrepid as he -- Lucy Bakewell, who had emigrated from England with her family. They tried to make a go of it running a mill in the rough little river town of Henderson, Ky., but you sense that Audubon's fascination with birds, which he had already begun to paint, was a distraction that would doom any mundane business he put his hand to.
When the business failed, he supported his family by teaching art and painting portraits -- much in demand in that time before photography -- in Louisville and Cincinnati, while continuing to build up his portfolio of American birds. Eventually, as Rhodes puts it, he ''reimagined himself as a one-man ornithological expeditionary force'' and in 1820 he set out downriver, leaving Lucy behind to raise their two sons. The next decade of the Audubons' married life would be a series of long separations and brief reunions as he assembled his collection of images and sailed to England to try to get it published.
As Rhodes observes, ''Europe was more curious to know America than America was yet curious to know itself.'' Audubon's work caused a sensation in England and France, and the publication of ''Birds of America'' gave this self-made American fame and fortune.
It won't surprise anyone who read Rhodes' Pulitzer Prize-winning ''The Making of the Atomic Bomb'' that his Audubon biography is a masterly piece of storytelling. To be sure, the documentation available to him was generous -- Audubon left a clear paper trail; he was a prolific journal-keeper and letter writer, and the long separation of husband and wife made dutiful, detailed correspondence necessary, even though their letters would sometimes take many months in the delivery. But it falls to Rhodes to give Audubon's story texture and shape and significance, and he succeeds splendidly.
If I had to fault the book, I'd say that Rhodes never quite puts his finger on the source of Audubon's compulsive devotion to painting birds. Following the lead of one of Audubon's autobiographical writings (not always, as we've seen, the most reliable source), he ascribes it to a desire to ''revivify the dead,'' born of the young Audubon's witnessing of cruel death during the Terror. But nothing will ever quite explain the passion that drove Audubon to walk hundreds of miles in uncharted land, to plunge into snake-infested swamps and dense forests and in one instance that Rhodes beautifully re-creates, to climb inside a hollow tree swarming with chimney swallows, all in pursuit of knowledge of bird life.
Rhodes is simply awed by what Audubon accomplished: ''When he set out to create a monumental work of art with his own heart and mind and hands, he succeeded -- a staggering achievement, as if one man had single-handedly financed and built an Egyptian pyramid.'' Rhodes hasn't built any pyramids, but he should be fairly proud of his own achievement: an absorbing, revealing, entertaining biography, the best I've read this year.
John James Audubon produced his paintings of the birds of America by killing, skinning and dissecting thousands of them. Those astonishing images of birds full of life -- flying, fighting, mating, preening, feeding their young -- were achieved by mounting dead birds on a contraption of his own devising: ''Sharpened wires embedded in a board onto which he could impale his fresh specimens in lifelike attitudes,'' as Richard Rhodes describes it.
We cringe at facts like that, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone who reads Rhodes' brilliant new book quits the Audubon Society and joins People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals instead. But though it may be a sin to kill a mockingbird, how else are you going to depict a mockingbird accurately if you have no cameras, no color film, no telephoto lenses?
Rhodes' marvelously detailed and readable new biography lets us see anew what an extraordinary achievement Audubon's ''Birds of America'' was. Audubon's contributions to art and science not only earned him recognition as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London -- only the second American (the first was Benjamin Franklin) to achieve that honor -- but also, Rhodes points out, directly influenced Charles Darwin.
One of the revelations provided by history and biography is how the world changes. Rhodes' account of the life and times of Audubon is not only a portrait of an amazing man, it's also a look at untamed America in the early 19th century, a journey into a wilderness that was vanishing before Audubon's own eyes -- so fast that in 1833, 30 years after he first set foot in America, he wrote, ''Nature herself is perishing.''
When the 18-year-old Frenchman came to the United States in 1803, he was only a few years younger than the country itself. He came from a country that had recently experienced the grisly turmoil of the Reign of Terror, and that now threatened to draft him into the army Napoleon was assembling to conquer Europe. France had a population of 27 million; there were only 6 million people in the United States, Rhodes tells us, ''two-thirds of them living within fifty miles of Atlantic tidewater.''
What better place for a man to reinvent himself? And Audubon was already adept at reinvention: He was born out of wedlock to a chambermaid on his father's sugar plantation in what's now Haiti, and until he was 8 years old his name was Jean Rabin. When his father's wife agreed to raise the child, he was renamed Jean-Jacques Fougere Audubon. He later began calling himself John James LaForest Audubon, and throughout his life he made up stuff about himself: that he had studied with the artist Jacques-Louis David, for example, or that he was born in Louisiana.
Audubon's fibs have not endeared him to some people. Rhodes quotes, for example, the art historian-critic Robert Hughes' characterization of Audubon as ''self-inflated, paranoid and a bit of a thug.'' But Rhodes presents us with a very different Audubon, one who was many things: a handsome, charismatic, driven artist; an intrepid woodsman; a meticulous researcher; a perfectionist; an extraordinarily successful self-promoter; and a devoted husband and father.
Audubon's was an epic life. Slipping free of the constraints and bloody conflicts of early 19th-century Europe and the raw new civilization taking hold in the eastern United States, he made his way into the wilderness of the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. He married a woman nearly as intrepid as he -- Lucy Bakewell, who had emigrated from England with her family. They tried to make a go of it running a mill in the rough little river town of Henderson, Ky., but you sense that Audubon's fascination with birds, which he had already begun to paint, was a distraction that would doom any mundane business he put his hand to.
When the business failed, he supported his family by teaching art and painting portraits -- much in demand in that time before photography -- in Louisville and Cincinnati, while continuing to build up his portfolio of American birds. Eventually, as Rhodes puts it, he ''reimagined himself as a one-man ornithological expeditionary force'' and in 1820 he set out downriver, leaving Lucy behind to raise their two sons. The next decade of the Audubons' married life would be a series of long separations and brief reunions as he assembled his collection of images and sailed to England to try to get it published.
As Rhodes observes, ''Europe was more curious to know America than America was yet curious to know itself.'' Audubon's work caused a sensation in England and France, and the publication of ''Birds of America'' gave this self-made American fame and fortune.
It won't surprise anyone who read Rhodes' Pulitzer Prize-winning ''The Making of the Atomic Bomb'' that his Audubon biography is a masterly piece of storytelling. To be sure, the documentation available to him was generous -- Audubon left a clear paper trail; he was a prolific journal-keeper and letter writer, and the long separation of husband and wife made dutiful, detailed correspondence necessary, even though their letters would sometimes take many months in the delivery. But it falls to Rhodes to give Audubon's story texture and shape and significance, and he succeeds splendidly.
If I had to fault the book, I'd say that Rhodes never quite puts his finger on the source of Audubon's compulsive devotion to painting birds. Following the lead of one of Audubon's autobiographical writings (not always, as we've seen, the most reliable source), he ascribes it to a desire to ''revivify the dead,'' born of the young Audubon's witnessing of cruel death during the Terror. But nothing will ever quite explain the passion that drove Audubon to walk hundreds of miles in uncharted land, to plunge into snake-infested swamps and dense forests and in one instance that Rhodes beautifully re-creates, to climb inside a hollow tree swarming with chimney swallows, all in pursuit of knowledge of bird life.
Rhodes is simply awed by what Audubon accomplished: ''When he set out to create a monumental work of art with his own heart and mind and hands, he succeeded -- a staggering achievement, as if one man had single-handedly financed and built an Egyptian pyramid.'' Rhodes hasn't built any pyramids, but he should be fairly proud of his own achievement: an absorbing, revealing, entertaining biography, the best I've read this year.
January 6, 2014
I'd give this six stars if I could. Rhodes knows his stuff. He's a meticulous researcher, but even better, he tells a riveting tale. I had trouble putting this down, and Jeff began to curse Audubon. If you want a true story of love and hardship, adventure and art, perseverance and foresight . . . well, this is it. Rhodes draws on journals as well as personal and business letters to make his tale personal, detailed, and poignant. Loved it.
June 6, 2017
I've decided reading biographies is quite strange. How weird it is to experience a person's entire life, from birth to death, griefs and hopes, failures and victories, empathy and apathy. Autobiographies, I think, are much more biased, as people want to present themselves in a certain light. But a biography...a biography doesn't turn away when bankruptcies come, children die, sickness ravishes, and friends turn away. Good biographies flip your emotional state like a child playing with a lightswitch.
As far as a review of the book, I would say it was an average or above average biography. It seemed very well researched, and fairly well presented. (100 pages of notes and citations always impresses me.)
As far as a review of the life it concerns: can anyone really rate someone's life? But it was indeed quite interesting, I learned a lot, and I felt very deeply.
As far as a review of the book, I would say it was an average or above average biography. It seemed very well researched, and fairly well presented. (100 pages of notes and citations always impresses me.)
As far as a review of the life it concerns: can anyone really rate someone's life? But it was indeed quite interesting, I learned a lot, and I felt very deeply.
January 4, 2017
Rhodes delves deep into Audubon's correspondences and reveals a man's struggles to attain his ambitions and sustain his family's fortunes. Much of the book reads like an epistolary novel, with Audubon and his wife Lucy expressing their love and doubt as Audubon tries to make it as a naturalist and artist in the elite circles (comprised of those willing to buy Audubon's engravings) of Europe and America's coastal cities. Rhodes does a good job illustrating how Audubon responds to historical winds, including the economic depression that drove him from trading in Kentucky to full time bird illustration. Though we get a glimpse into the late Audubon's thinking about environmental destruction, the Audubon Rhodes portrays is mostly cool to the death that his art requires. He mixes adoration for brave eagles and tenderness for certain birds with a general indifference (or blindness?) towards killing thousands upon thousands of birds big and small. I found this the hardest to wrap my head around. Having read nothing about Audubon, I assumed he would become a conversationist late in his life. But he seems instead to be a typical European coming to the new world and treating its resources as though they were inexhaustible. This view never really changes, and I was disappointed to end the book learning nothing about how this hunter and artist of birds became so singularly tied to habitat and wildlife conservation. Though disappointed to learn nothing of this, I still enjoyed Rhodes' story, which unfolds at a steady pace. He knows much about the American frontier at the time and illustrates Audubon's world well, including the social dynamics between England, France, and the planters of the American south. The need for honor, distinction, and the need to maintain one's station (or rise above it) pervade Audubon's relationship with his family and those who assist and challenge him over his career. Fortune shifts over time as characters meet success and failure at different junctures in their lives. The American frontier was anything but stable for those making do from it in the early 19th century.
February 15, 2008
Well-researched and informative. Great insights into Audubon's life and career. Better insights into the American frontier during the early 19th century. For the first hundred pages, I was a bit put off by the author's sentence structures and turns of phrase, but Audobon's story is deeply engaging--full of twists, turns and trials. Rhodes has provided us with a monumental portrait of a monumental man, and an insight into the mania, triumphs, and setbacks that punctuate the lives of artists.
August 21, 2019
Rhodes has penned an engaging and inspiring biography of the astonishing life of John James Audubon, naturalist, artist and author of Birds of America, the enormous and staggeringly gorgeous book of which first editions today sell at auction for upwards of $10 million. Audubon's passionate and single-minded obsession with painting North American birds, frequently forsaking financial stability, relationships with family and friends, and even hygiene in pursuit of his life's work, is reminiscent of Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy. The book reads like an absorbing adventure, but there are a number of sobering passages, among them Audubon coming to the (accurate, as it turns out) realization that the wild state of nature he was presently observing in the United States would be greatly diminished within a century. And like Meriwether Lewis, who famously lamented on his birthday as having contributed very little to human knowledge (this, while in the midst of the Lewis & Clark Expedition), Audubon rather heartbreakingly frets that he hasn't really accomplished much of anything, despite having produced hundreds of magnificent paintings. Lucy Audubon, whom Audubon abandoned for years at a time chasing publication of his paintings, was truly a saint.
December 27, 2022
This is not a short synopsis, but a detailed look at Audubon's life. The author does a good job of describing Audubon's exploits from various letters written by himself and his family, as well as some by his enemies. Definitely worth reading.
July 14, 2017
An amazing and engrossing biography of Audubon. Really enjoyed learning about the artist and naturalist that was such a lively and admirable character.
March 5, 2017
This excellent and very detailed biography of John James Audubon left me with three main insights:
* Unlike many of the gentlemen naturalists of the Royal Society (as described in The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science), or such Victorian era scientists as Charles Darwin, John James Audubon was not monied, and both he and his devoted wife Lucy worked hard most of their lives.
* Rhodes makes a strong case that Audubon was a good businessman and a daring entrepreneur. After an early business failure, he developed his vision - compile and ultimately publish the highest quality and most complete catalog of North American birds - and then he worked relentlessly for years to accomplish that. He weathered false friends, production difficulties, and the emotional challenge of separation from his wife and sons for several years; and nonetheless managed to raise the equivalent of $2 million in funding through subscriptions, admission at gallery shows, and ongoing sales of paintings to cover production costs. Audubon comes across in the biography as both a gifted artist and a man of incredible practical will.
* America changed so much during Audubon's life, from virtual wilderness on the frontier, to tame - even worn out - landscapes in some of the same places just a few decades later. Rhodes' narrative picks up on revealing changes in the landscape, society, and the economy, from the greater comfort in the Atlantic crossing brought by steamships, to the line of advance of the domesticated honeybee in the mid1840s (somewhere along the Upper Missouri), to this reflection of Audubon's, traveling down the Mississippi after his first return from England in 1829:
"When I see that no longer any aborigines are to be found there, and that the vast herds of elks, deer, and buffaloes which once pastured on these hills and in these valleys... have ceased to exist; when I reflect that all this grand portion of our Union, instead of being in a state of nature, is now more or less covered with villages, farms, and towns... when I remember that these extraordinary changes have all taken place in the short period of twenty years, I pause, wonder, and although I know all to be fact, can scarcely believe its reality."(p337).
In that sense, while this is a comprehensive biography of Audubon, and brings him very much to life, it's also a terrific on-the-ground complement to broader political and economic histories of America in the first half of the 1800s. Thanks to Audubon's many moves and travels - in Virginia and Pennsylvania, along the Ohio, down to Louisiana, to New York, Charleston, and Florida; to Maine and Labrador - the book gives a rich and geographically diverse view of America in this era as well.
* Unlike many of the gentlemen naturalists of the Royal Society (as described in The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science), or such Victorian era scientists as Charles Darwin, John James Audubon was not monied, and both he and his devoted wife Lucy worked hard most of their lives.
* Rhodes makes a strong case that Audubon was a good businessman and a daring entrepreneur. After an early business failure, he developed his vision - compile and ultimately publish the highest quality and most complete catalog of North American birds - and then he worked relentlessly for years to accomplish that. He weathered false friends, production difficulties, and the emotional challenge of separation from his wife and sons for several years; and nonetheless managed to raise the equivalent of $2 million in funding through subscriptions, admission at gallery shows, and ongoing sales of paintings to cover production costs. Audubon comes across in the biography as both a gifted artist and a man of incredible practical will.
* America changed so much during Audubon's life, from virtual wilderness on the frontier, to tame - even worn out - landscapes in some of the same places just a few decades later. Rhodes' narrative picks up on revealing changes in the landscape, society, and the economy, from the greater comfort in the Atlantic crossing brought by steamships, to the line of advance of the domesticated honeybee in the mid1840s (somewhere along the Upper Missouri), to this reflection of Audubon's, traveling down the Mississippi after his first return from England in 1829:
"When I see that no longer any aborigines are to be found there, and that the vast herds of elks, deer, and buffaloes which once pastured on these hills and in these valleys... have ceased to exist; when I reflect that all this grand portion of our Union, instead of being in a state of nature, is now more or less covered with villages, farms, and towns... when I remember that these extraordinary changes have all taken place in the short period of twenty years, I pause, wonder, and although I know all to be fact, can scarcely believe its reality."(p337).
In that sense, while this is a comprehensive biography of Audubon, and brings him very much to life, it's also a terrific on-the-ground complement to broader political and economic histories of America in the first half of the 1800s. Thanks to Audubon's many moves and travels - in Virginia and Pennsylvania, along the Ohio, down to Louisiana, to New York, Charleston, and Florida; to Maine and Labrador - the book gives a rich and geographically diverse view of America in this era as well.
February 9, 2024
Wonderful biography, full of fascinating details about the amazing life of John James Audubon and the times in which he lived. The opening is a flat and cliched, but this changes within 10 pages, and you are swept along from there.
As the biographer says at one point, Audubon lived a dozen lives. His energy and magnetism, not to mention intelligence and focus, were extraordinary, and this book gives a sense of all of that. The physical strength and stamina to travel across the U.S. frontier as it existed in the early 1800s and to shuttle to England and back a half-dozen times -- wow. Over and over, there are tales of him pulling a raft up a river (not down, up!) in snow and mud, sleeping in buffalo skins, walking 200 miles in 10 days, pushing through swamps and dense forests --- and recording what he saw all the time. He was truly a backwoodsman in that famed era of Daniel Boone, but at the same time he was an educated, cultured man who spoke French, played multiple instruments, gave dancing lessons, and was a self-taught artist.
If Audubon didn't draw, but just wrote about his observations of wildlife, forests, and rivers, he would have been one of the great naturalists of his day. But on top of that he made the most exquisite and exactly drawings of wildlife that had ever been done -- and then criss-crossed the U.S. and England to find enough subscribers to publish the most lavish nature prints ever made.
I haven't read other Audubon biographies, but apparently this one goes more deeply than others into his personal life. If so, it's a great service to telling the fascinating story. Audubon was the illegitimate son of a Haitian sugar plantation owner from France. Audubon's mother was a White servant, not a Black slave, but still he felt the source of his birth was so shameful that he hid it for his entire life. I guess his beloved wife Lucy knew at some point, but repeatedly Audubon wrote that he was born in Louisiana to a woman of gentility or even nobility. His father was wealthy, obviously, but lost most of his wealth and nearly his life during the French Revolution. James was in France as a young teen at the time, and he witnessed hangings and beheadings that scarred him for life. For example, he always wore his hair long because he said he saw people have their hair cut prior to being guillotined.
Audubon was sent to the US as an 18-year-old in order to avoid conscription in Napoleon's army. With family connections and his own charm, he was able to borrow money to try to start a farm near Pennsylvania. It didn't go great, though it wasn't a disaster, and he set out to earn his fortune on the wilderness edge of the US in order to be allowed to marry the woman he loved. Audubon was about 20 and Lucy 18 when he went off towards small towns along the Ohio River in search of fortune. A series of twists and turns enabled him to marry Lucy a couple of years later, and they did reasonably well as merchants in border towns until the US embargo of trade with France and England due to the War of 1812 sent him into bankruptcy. He had slaves who farmed for him and acted as servants. The loss of that wealth was a humiliation he never forgot, either.
Anyway, from then through the next 40 years of his life, he pretty much always struggled to reach financial security. He floundered at building a mill -- it was built but it didn't work very well -- and other import-export businesses, and at about age 30 he began to support himself by drawing portraits in charcoal. A lot of his drawings are reproduced in the biography, and they're excellent. Then he got the idea, with Lucy's help, of making and selling a book of his bird drawings. He had been doing them since childhood as they were a fascination for him and also an escape from things like the French Revolution. Living on the frontier, he saw immense flocks of passenger pigeons and other birds, like literally tens of thousands or even millions of them, in the last decade before encroachment of "civilization" led to widespread slaughter of birds and destruction of the forests and swamps on which they depended.
Audubon drew his birds and colored them with watercolors in a mixture he invented. He also invented the idea of showing them in poses he actually witnessed in nature. These breakthroughs made his works far superior to those of other budding naturalists of the day, who tended to draw from taxidermist models or to copy others' drawings. Audubon insisted on getting the details right and in showing the birds surrounded by plants and other animals he actually saw them interacting with. And thus his fame rests today because if you've ever seen his original works, they jump off the page.
The book includes some of the negatives about Audubon, but it lays those out fairly lightly, especially compared to how they would be handled today. Most notably, the book notes he was a slaveholder at a modest level (5-10 slaves) but doesn't comment much on his callous attitude towards them. In one example, Audubon took two slaves with him down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, where he tried to find patrons for his drawings. When that failed, he sold the slaves so he could take a steamboat home and settle some debts. Selling slaves in Louisiana was a death sentence, as few adults survived sugar plantations for more than a few years. Audubon's weird relationship with his wife gets a lot of coverage in this book, and Lucy is given her due as an important influence and advisor. But still, the situation was really weird, and the biographer kind of just shows its weirdness without contemplating its toll on Lucy. Basically, Audubon was gone for years at a time, trying to built up a nest egg (pun intended) and finding new birds, and Lucy was left to fend for herself as a teacher and mother. And then Audubon would write to her to complain that she wasn't writing to him enough or that he wished she could come with him but he wouldn't ask her to come until he could enable her to live in comfort. And he threatened a bunch of times to abandon her, but blamed it on her indifference to him and her (not his) humiliation at their reduced financial circumstances. It's bizarre.
The trials and tribulations Audubon went through would be more than enough to discourage almost anyone. In an era today when people expect instant fame and riches -- and it seems to happen often enough -- to see how this man persevered with his art while trying to make a living doing regular-guy stuff reminds me of folk artists whose work is unknown until one day when they're 80 years old someone discovers these amazing sculptures they've been doing in their garage. But the amazing thing about Audubon is that he knew he was breaking new ground and he had the determination and fortitude to make sure it was seen during his lifetime and to literally change the face of science, art, and understanding of natural history of the US. At bottom, his bird expeditions and paintings were done because he wanted to; but at the same time, he wanted the world to benefit.
As the biographer says at one point, Audubon lived a dozen lives. His energy and magnetism, not to mention intelligence and focus, were extraordinary, and this book gives a sense of all of that. The physical strength and stamina to travel across the U.S. frontier as it existed in the early 1800s and to shuttle to England and back a half-dozen times -- wow. Over and over, there are tales of him pulling a raft up a river (not down, up!) in snow and mud, sleeping in buffalo skins, walking 200 miles in 10 days, pushing through swamps and dense forests --- and recording what he saw all the time. He was truly a backwoodsman in that famed era of Daniel Boone, but at the same time he was an educated, cultured man who spoke French, played multiple instruments, gave dancing lessons, and was a self-taught artist.
If Audubon didn't draw, but just wrote about his observations of wildlife, forests, and rivers, he would have been one of the great naturalists of his day. But on top of that he made the most exquisite and exactly drawings of wildlife that had ever been done -- and then criss-crossed the U.S. and England to find enough subscribers to publish the most lavish nature prints ever made.
I haven't read other Audubon biographies, but apparently this one goes more deeply than others into his personal life. If so, it's a great service to telling the fascinating story. Audubon was the illegitimate son of a Haitian sugar plantation owner from France. Audubon's mother was a White servant, not a Black slave, but still he felt the source of his birth was so shameful that he hid it for his entire life. I guess his beloved wife Lucy knew at some point, but repeatedly Audubon wrote that he was born in Louisiana to a woman of gentility or even nobility. His father was wealthy, obviously, but lost most of his wealth and nearly his life during the French Revolution. James was in France as a young teen at the time, and he witnessed hangings and beheadings that scarred him for life. For example, he always wore his hair long because he said he saw people have their hair cut prior to being guillotined.
Audubon was sent to the US as an 18-year-old in order to avoid conscription in Napoleon's army. With family connections and his own charm, he was able to borrow money to try to start a farm near Pennsylvania. It didn't go great, though it wasn't a disaster, and he set out to earn his fortune on the wilderness edge of the US in order to be allowed to marry the woman he loved. Audubon was about 20 and Lucy 18 when he went off towards small towns along the Ohio River in search of fortune. A series of twists and turns enabled him to marry Lucy a couple of years later, and they did reasonably well as merchants in border towns until the US embargo of trade with France and England due to the War of 1812 sent him into bankruptcy. He had slaves who farmed for him and acted as servants. The loss of that wealth was a humiliation he never forgot, either.
Anyway, from then through the next 40 years of his life, he pretty much always struggled to reach financial security. He floundered at building a mill -- it was built but it didn't work very well -- and other import-export businesses, and at about age 30 he began to support himself by drawing portraits in charcoal. A lot of his drawings are reproduced in the biography, and they're excellent. Then he got the idea, with Lucy's help, of making and selling a book of his bird drawings. He had been doing them since childhood as they were a fascination for him and also an escape from things like the French Revolution. Living on the frontier, he saw immense flocks of passenger pigeons and other birds, like literally tens of thousands or even millions of them, in the last decade before encroachment of "civilization" led to widespread slaughter of birds and destruction of the forests and swamps on which they depended.
Audubon drew his birds and colored them with watercolors in a mixture he invented. He also invented the idea of showing them in poses he actually witnessed in nature. These breakthroughs made his works far superior to those of other budding naturalists of the day, who tended to draw from taxidermist models or to copy others' drawings. Audubon insisted on getting the details right and in showing the birds surrounded by plants and other animals he actually saw them interacting with. And thus his fame rests today because if you've ever seen his original works, they jump off the page.
The book includes some of the negatives about Audubon, but it lays those out fairly lightly, especially compared to how they would be handled today. Most notably, the book notes he was a slaveholder at a modest level (5-10 slaves) but doesn't comment much on his callous attitude towards them. In one example, Audubon took two slaves with him down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, where he tried to find patrons for his drawings. When that failed, he sold the slaves so he could take a steamboat home and settle some debts. Selling slaves in Louisiana was a death sentence, as few adults survived sugar plantations for more than a few years. Audubon's weird relationship with his wife gets a lot of coverage in this book, and Lucy is given her due as an important influence and advisor. But still, the situation was really weird, and the biographer kind of just shows its weirdness without contemplating its toll on Lucy. Basically, Audubon was gone for years at a time, trying to built up a nest egg (pun intended) and finding new birds, and Lucy was left to fend for herself as a teacher and mother. And then Audubon would write to her to complain that she wasn't writing to him enough or that he wished she could come with him but he wouldn't ask her to come until he could enable her to live in comfort. And he threatened a bunch of times to abandon her, but blamed it on her indifference to him and her (not his) humiliation at their reduced financial circumstances. It's bizarre.
The trials and tribulations Audubon went through would be more than enough to discourage almost anyone. In an era today when people expect instant fame and riches -- and it seems to happen often enough -- to see how this man persevered with his art while trying to make a living doing regular-guy stuff reminds me of folk artists whose work is unknown until one day when they're 80 years old someone discovers these amazing sculptures they've been doing in their garage. But the amazing thing about Audubon is that he knew he was breaking new ground and he had the determination and fortitude to make sure it was seen during his lifetime and to literally change the face of science, art, and understanding of natural history of the US. At bottom, his bird expeditions and paintings were done because he wanted to; but at the same time, he wanted the world to benefit.
April 6, 2023
Review title: Birdman
John James Audubon's oversized multivolume The Birds of America is an authentic one-of-a-kind American classic, beautiful, rare, and extremely expensive and collectible in it's original imprints (one sold in February for $8 million). Audubon himself was also a classic American--except that he wasn't! Born Jean Rabin in 1785, taking his mother's last name because of his illegitimate birth on his French father's sugar plantation on the island soon to renamed Haiti after it's slave-led revolution, Audubon himself was renamed Jean-Jacques Fougere Audubon in France after the revolution to take his father's name and hide his downstairs birth. Richard Rhodes, who has written many other biographies and histories, most notably of the atomic bomb), tells his story here.
Because of his birth and his father's financial losses in the revolutions that overtook both Haiti and France, Audubon came to America to work for a living. But his love was for drawing birds, even as a young man. He used his own invention of a portable board and cable frame to enable him pose his birds in lifelike positions against backgrounds displaying their natural surroundings. At the time in the early 19th century, no one was drawing wildlife from life ("observation for hunting had not yet disconnected from observation for scientific knowledge", p. 75) so Audubon was a keen tracker and hunter to find his subjects. Later he did do some drawing from life and was a pioneer in discouraging mass killing as he saw the passenger pigeon hunted to extinction and worried the buffalo would suffer the same fate.
On the path to becoming American Audubon married his wife Lucy (born in England but immigrated to America), "spoke English with a heavy French accent" (p. 86) and had two sons. On July 3,1812 in Philadelphia he relinquished his French citizenship and took the oath to become an American (p. 104-105). But now, like many another young father with a wife and children he set aside his artistic avocation to try to earn a living in business, moving the family to the still-wilderness Kentucky along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, traveling up to St. Louis and down to New Orleans in search of customers to little avail. His business went bankrupt, and to pay his debts and put food on the table he tried portrait painting (then common before the age of the photograph), forced at times in his own words to "put aside for a while even the thoughts of birds" (p. 116).
But like the American spirit he was embodying, Audubon, with his wife's support, never gave up. He was an indefatigable hiker and worker, rising before dawn to walk dozens of miles in a day to find his birds, then devoting long days to painting them. He and Lucy agreed that to realize his dream of publishing Birds he would need to go to the center of the printing universe to find patrons, engravers, publishers, and buyers, so in 1826 he headed for England. "James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans had been published in London in April and was blooming to a nationwide fad. Now Natty Bumppo was sailing for England armed with a spectacular portfolio of American birds--concentrated essence of wilderness." (p. 239). An anonymous observer wrote this description of the 41-year-old Audubon shortly after his arrival:
Much of the rest of his life was poured into the work of publishing his masterpiece, including raising the funds to self-publish it by selling subscriptions to the planned four volumes with 400 paintings in the very large "double elephant" folio size pages (approximately 38 x 26 inches). He was, in essence, selling himself to those who could afford to buy such an expensive set, who were literal royalty at a time and place where that mattered immensely, who were scientific royalty at a time when that field was dominated by wealthy amateurs and a few celebrity scientists, and to the world's foremost artists and technicians in the engraving and printing business. And Audubon did all this without government grants, publishers' advances, and great personal wealth. "Audubon was many things, including mortally shy in the presence of people he feared might be his superiors, but he was never simple." (p. 284), the word used by Sir Walter Scott to describe his first impression of the American. "Audubon had transformed himself from a Frenchman of doubtful antecedents into a prominent American, . . . [then] had simplified himself into an American woodsman to shape his British celebrity." (p. 346-347) The scientific and artistic skill to find, identify, and paint his birds is undeniable, and the lasting beauty and value of the work justify the Audubon's means and effort.
Returning to America in the 1830s after initiating the publication process to do more drawing, Audubon saw the end of the wild America he had known and painted just a few years before, and wrote in words echoing scenes that Tolkien would write a century later: "No sooner was the first sawmill erected than the axemen began their devastations. Trees one after another were, and are yet, constantly heard falling during the days; and in calm nights the greedy mills told the sad tale that in a century the noble forests around should exist no more." (p. 331). A return trip down the Ohio to the Mississippi, where villages and towns had replaced nature, buffalo, and native Americans, left Audubon to write wistfully,"Whether these changes are for the better or the worse, I shall not pretend to say; but in whatever way my conclusions may incline, I feel with regret that there are on record no satisfactory accounts of the state of that portion of the country." (p. 337)
Audubon's masterpiece captured in science and art what was being lost and preserved it for posterity. His unique personality, his great skill, and his unflagging effort were all embodied in that irreplaceable art and artifact. He became the truest of Americans.
John James Audubon's oversized multivolume The Birds of America is an authentic one-of-a-kind American classic, beautiful, rare, and extremely expensive and collectible in it's original imprints (one sold in February for $8 million). Audubon himself was also a classic American--except that he wasn't! Born Jean Rabin in 1785, taking his mother's last name because of his illegitimate birth on his French father's sugar plantation on the island soon to renamed Haiti after it's slave-led revolution, Audubon himself was renamed Jean-Jacques Fougere Audubon in France after the revolution to take his father's name and hide his downstairs birth. Richard Rhodes, who has written many other biographies and histories, most notably of the atomic bomb), tells his story here.
Because of his birth and his father's financial losses in the revolutions that overtook both Haiti and France, Audubon came to America to work for a living. But his love was for drawing birds, even as a young man. He used his own invention of a portable board and cable frame to enable him pose his birds in lifelike positions against backgrounds displaying their natural surroundings. At the time in the early 19th century, no one was drawing wildlife from life ("observation for hunting had not yet disconnected from observation for scientific knowledge", p. 75) so Audubon was a keen tracker and hunter to find his subjects. Later he did do some drawing from life and was a pioneer in discouraging mass killing as he saw the passenger pigeon hunted to extinction and worried the buffalo would suffer the same fate.
On the path to becoming American Audubon married his wife Lucy (born in England but immigrated to America), "spoke English with a heavy French accent" (p. 86) and had two sons. On July 3,1812 in Philadelphia he relinquished his French citizenship and took the oath to become an American (p. 104-105). But now, like many another young father with a wife and children he set aside his artistic avocation to try to earn a living in business, moving the family to the still-wilderness Kentucky along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, traveling up to St. Louis and down to New Orleans in search of customers to little avail. His business went bankrupt, and to pay his debts and put food on the table he tried portrait painting (then common before the age of the photograph), forced at times in his own words to "put aside for a while even the thoughts of birds" (p. 116).
But like the American spirit he was embodying, Audubon, with his wife's support, never gave up. He was an indefatigable hiker and worker, rising before dawn to walk dozens of miles in a day to find his birds, then devoting long days to painting them. He and Lucy agreed that to realize his dream of publishing Birds he would need to go to the center of the printing universe to find patrons, engravers, publishers, and buyers, so in 1826 he headed for England. "James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans had been published in London in April and was blooming to a nationwide fad. Now Natty Bumppo was sailing for England armed with a spectacular portfolio of American birds--concentrated essence of wilderness." (p. 239). An anonymous observer wrote this description of the 41-year-old Audubon shortly after his arrival:
The man . . . was not a man to be seen and forgotten, or passed on the pavement without glances of surprise and scrutiny. The tall and somewhat stooping form, the clothes not made by a West End but a Far West tailor, the steady, rapid, springing step, the long hair, the aquiline features, and the glowing angry eyes—the expression of a handsome man conscious of ceasing to be young, and an air and manner which told you that whoever you might be he was John Audubon—will never be forgotten by anyone who knew or saw him. (p. 253)
Much of the rest of his life was poured into the work of publishing his masterpiece, including raising the funds to self-publish it by selling subscriptions to the planned four volumes with 400 paintings in the very large "double elephant" folio size pages (approximately 38 x 26 inches). He was, in essence, selling himself to those who could afford to buy such an expensive set, who were literal royalty at a time and place where that mattered immensely, who were scientific royalty at a time when that field was dominated by wealthy amateurs and a few celebrity scientists, and to the world's foremost artists and technicians in the engraving and printing business. And Audubon did all this without government grants, publishers' advances, and great personal wealth. "Audubon was many things, including mortally shy in the presence of people he feared might be his superiors, but he was never simple." (p. 284), the word used by Sir Walter Scott to describe his first impression of the American. "Audubon had transformed himself from a Frenchman of doubtful antecedents into a prominent American, . . . [then] had simplified himself into an American woodsman to shape his British celebrity." (p. 346-347) The scientific and artistic skill to find, identify, and paint his birds is undeniable, and the lasting beauty and value of the work justify the Audubon's means and effort.
Returning to America in the 1830s after initiating the publication process to do more drawing, Audubon saw the end of the wild America he had known and painted just a few years before, and wrote in words echoing scenes that Tolkien would write a century later: "No sooner was the first sawmill erected than the axemen began their devastations. Trees one after another were, and are yet, constantly heard falling during the days; and in calm nights the greedy mills told the sad tale that in a century the noble forests around should exist no more." (p. 331). A return trip down the Ohio to the Mississippi, where villages and towns had replaced nature, buffalo, and native Americans, left Audubon to write wistfully,"Whether these changes are for the better or the worse, I shall not pretend to say; but in whatever way my conclusions may incline, I feel with regret that there are on record no satisfactory accounts of the state of that portion of the country." (p. 337)
Audubon's masterpiece captured in science and art what was being lost and preserved it for posterity. His unique personality, his great skill, and his unflagging effort were all embodied in that irreplaceable art and artifact. He became the truest of Americans.
September 2, 2009
I'm not very good at this book review thing. My grandfather did it professionally and he was a master at it. I enjoy reading as much as he did but I lack the ability to put into words at a lofty and intellectual level, why I specifically liked it. I mention this only because I think this book should get a better review than I'm going to be able to provide, mine being, I fear over-simplistic....
This was a wonderful book about an intriguing man, his family, and also, in some ways, about the changing landscape and society of post-Revolutionary War America. This was meticulously researched and very well written. I'm a bit of a bird nerd, a sucker for "mountain men in the wild" tales, and non-fiction (and fiction) about early America and this certainly fit the bill. The imagery was so vivid and the characters came alive. I especially enjoyed the information on Audubon and his wife, Lucy. In my mind, she was interesting enough to have her own story!
Audubon is historically important because his "artwork" is really the only available pictorial detail of wildlife in early America. Under any circumstance, this was an amazing feat, even more incredible, given how difficult travel was throughout the country, and the world, at that time without the luxury of a camera, lugging around all of the trappings required of an artist and painter.
This was a very satisfying history lesson!
This was a wonderful book about an intriguing man, his family, and also, in some ways, about the changing landscape and society of post-Revolutionary War America. This was meticulously researched and very well written. I'm a bit of a bird nerd, a sucker for "mountain men in the wild" tales, and non-fiction (and fiction) about early America and this certainly fit the bill. The imagery was so vivid and the characters came alive. I especially enjoyed the information on Audubon and his wife, Lucy. In my mind, she was interesting enough to have her own story!
Audubon is historically important because his "artwork" is really the only available pictorial detail of wildlife in early America. Under any circumstance, this was an amazing feat, even more incredible, given how difficult travel was throughout the country, and the world, at that time without the luxury of a camera, lugging around all of the trappings required of an artist and painter.
This was a very satisfying history lesson!
December 5, 2018
I enjoyed reading this book, but I think some people might be bored with the minutiae the author includes, due to the fact that his source material is mostly letters and Audubon's own extensive journal. Nonetheless, Audubon himself is quite an interesting character--affable, by all accounts, but driven to complete his project of completing life-size paintings of all the birds in the US! He thus lived an unusual life, much of it tromping around the woods and frontier, away from his family, and much of it impecunious. The world was so small at that time that he makes connections with several well-known historical people in his travels. Half of the draw of the book, for me, was the detailed account of the way people lived and thought in those early days in America. The method he used to create his paintings of birds doing natural things in their natural habitat, the abundance of birds and other wildlife at the time and the commonplace wanton destruction of wildlife, which bothered Audubon, all rub up against modern-day regard for animals in a thought-provoking way in this biography of a famous American artist.
September 22, 2008
I finally finished this book this AM, and I am really happy I took the time to learn about the man whose name has become synonymous with bird conservation in the US.
The diligence, energy, and passion Audubon had for his desire to document the birds of America is astounding and probably difficult to find in many others in our present technological age.
The author of this book unearths interesting facts and excerpts from Audubon's journals throughout the book. I really enjoyed the thoroughness of the text as well as the window into the world of travel and exploration in the late 1700's and into the 1800's.
I recommend this book to any birder or conservationist. I think they will find Audubon's life inspiring.
The diligence, energy, and passion Audubon had for his desire to document the birds of America is astounding and probably difficult to find in many others in our present technological age.
The author of this book unearths interesting facts and excerpts from Audubon's journals throughout the book. I really enjoyed the thoroughness of the text as well as the window into the world of travel and exploration in the late 1700's and into the 1800's.
I recommend this book to any birder or conservationist. I think they will find Audubon's life inspiring.
April 16, 2011
Although Audubon was a Frenchman, he became an American in the truest sense of the word. As a businessman he lost everything in the panic od 1819. He then reinvented himself as an artist and naturalist, becoming one of the most famous men of his time. He devoted his life to Birds of America. He also witnessed and chronicled the beginnings of the destruction of the American wilderness by the people who thought our resources were limitless.
This is a fine, well written account of this life, and I would reccommend to anyone loving biography, American history or natural history.
Heads up. The Longmont museum will be having an exhibit of 45 Original Audubons in June.
This is a fine, well written account of this life, and I would reccommend to anyone loving biography, American history or natural history.
Heads up. The Longmont museum will be having an exhibit of 45 Original Audubons in June.
January 12, 2008
i loved this book- but i'm a bird nerd and love books set in frontier america. richard rhodes must have lived and breathed james audubon for years to come up with such a rich and compelling picture of audubon, america and europe in the 1700's.
November 20, 2013
Excellent research and writing. This was a wonderful window into a fascinating time period is our country's history and about a unique passionate and driven man. However, I can't say that I would've wanted to be his wife!
June 9, 2017
"Wherever there are birds there is Audubon: rara avis."
I very much enjoyed this biography of John James Audubon. Richard Rhodes quotes at length from Audubon's journal and many letters, so I came away with a much better idea of who Audubon was and how he saw the world, especially his beloved birds.
"The Birds of America" is Audubon's most famous and important work, and his efforts collecting specimens, preparing drawings, and marketing the book provided an excellent framework for tying the whole biography together. "The Birds of America" is so important that it really seems like it would be best to read this biography with a copy of "The Birds of America" within easy reach to get the full effect. While the book included two sections of beautiful color plates prepared for "The Birds of America," including some of his most iconic drawings, it also made reference to others that were not shown. And they really couldn't have been; "The Birds of America" contains around 400 plates. At any rate, this book made me want my own copy of "The Birds of America," whereas before I hadn't given it much thought.
Audubon seemed particularly prescient about the fate of America's wilderness, and some of the species he drew (among them the passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet, and possibly the ivory-billed woodpecker) are now extinct. Audubon was an amazing artist, and in addition to enjoying his work we can take important lessons for the future from it.
I very much enjoyed this biography of John James Audubon. Richard Rhodes quotes at length from Audubon's journal and many letters, so I came away with a much better idea of who Audubon was and how he saw the world, especially his beloved birds.
"The Birds of America" is Audubon's most famous and important work, and his efforts collecting specimens, preparing drawings, and marketing the book provided an excellent framework for tying the whole biography together. "The Birds of America" is so important that it really seems like it would be best to read this biography with a copy of "The Birds of America" within easy reach to get the full effect. While the book included two sections of beautiful color plates prepared for "The Birds of America," including some of his most iconic drawings, it also made reference to others that were not shown. And they really couldn't have been; "The Birds of America" contains around 400 plates. At any rate, this book made me want my own copy of "The Birds of America," whereas before I hadn't given it much thought.
Audubon seemed particularly prescient about the fate of America's wilderness, and some of the species he drew (among them the passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet, and possibly the ivory-billed woodpecker) are now extinct. Audubon was an amazing artist, and in addition to enjoying his work we can take important lessons for the future from it.
November 8, 2021
This was a very enjoyable book. Reading it took me back to my days in public school when I first became interested in reading history and non-fictional adventure. I learned quite a bit in this volume... not just about Audubon, but about history, the history of those times, about the world events that involved Britain and the USA and France and all the politics and economics going on then that affected peoples’ everyday lives.
Of course, I learned a lot about the man himself; until I read this book I had no idea he had spent time in Canada - specifically in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Labrador.
It paints quite a picture, it’s well written and it’s supplemented with many of his journal entries and passages throughout.
My one bug about this book? Like a lot of other books I’ve read, the author writes that the (now extinct) Carolina parakeet is the only native species of parrot to have ever existed in North America. I think they actually mean the United States and Canada, because there are several parrot species indigenous to Mexico and the countries of the sub-continent of Central America – which, last time I looked at a map, were all part of “North America.” Can’t figure out why authors keep doing that, it kind of drives me nuts.
That aside, I would recommend this book to anyone who’s interested in birds, the history of ornithology, or history in general.
Of course, I learned a lot about the man himself; until I read this book I had no idea he had spent time in Canada - specifically in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Labrador.
It paints quite a picture, it’s well written and it’s supplemented with many of his journal entries and passages throughout.
My one bug about this book? Like a lot of other books I’ve read, the author writes that the (now extinct) Carolina parakeet is the only native species of parrot to have ever existed in North America. I think they actually mean the United States and Canada, because there are several parrot species indigenous to Mexico and the countries of the sub-continent of Central America – which, last time I looked at a map, were all part of “North America.” Can’t figure out why authors keep doing that, it kind of drives me nuts.
That aside, I would recommend this book to anyone who’s interested in birds, the history of ornithology, or history in general.
November 12, 2022
I wasn’t a fan. Terrifically researched, but the story focuses so much on uninteresting tedium at the expense of things I was actually interested in learning more about. For example, there’s almost no discussion of the “times” of the “life and times.” We don’t hear very much what the world of Audubon’s time was like and how we fit into it. There’s also very little contextualization of his artistic style within greater trends. What we do learn about is every single meeting he took, every single place he sought business, every single letter of introduction he had. Through that, you learn some things about his unique story — for example, I find it very interesting that he struggled to be solvent until late in his career and depending on his wife for income for a good while — but these are not things you should need to trudge through 350 pages of minutiae to learn. I also would’ve liked to know more about his posthumous legacy.
Overall, I found very little of what I tend to seek in a biography and was just glad to finish it by the end. I would only recommend this to someone with an extremely keen interest in the subject.
Overall, I found very little of what I tend to seek in a biography and was just glad to finish it by the end. I would only recommend this to someone with an extremely keen interest in the subject.
July 28, 2024
Quite good, maybe not the most smoothly flowing at times, but giving a good sense of Audubon's life and circumstances. The book focuses on the earlier years during which Audubon struggled and mostly failed in numerous endeavors. The historical time period is depicted quite effectively. One thing that really shines through is the power of Audubon's passion for birds, and especially drawing birds, and how essentially different this made him from everyone else around him. Audubon's physical intrepidness and perhaps surprising charisma also stand out in the text. Less interesting are the continual descriptions of other family members or properties that are hard to keep straight and not really interesting. Readers looking for insight into the more recent controversies over his use of slaves and his beliefs in that area are likely to be disappointed; however, I will say that this reader formed a distinct impression that all of that was just not a significant part of Audubon's life, in comparison with peers.
August 31, 2017
This was a slog. More than 400 pages of small print, but what made it difficult is that there are hundreds of names and dates that turn out to be insignificant to the layperson, but the (conscientious) reader doesn’t know what’s going to matter so has to read them all, and it’s slow going. I think the book is meant to be a scholarly, comprehensive biography of Audubon (1785-1851), but its audience is likely not scholars. I learned some things, like for how much of a marriage couples might live apart in frontier days (though the Audubons were unusually much separated), and about early American economic crises and mass bankruptcies (e.g., following the War of 1812 and the Louisiana Purchase).
December 18, 2023
Absolutely massive and in-depth story of Audubon, the great ornithologist whose drawings of American birds spurred massive interest in "New " world fauna. A bastard(this wasn't known) immigrant from France but born in Saint Domingue in modern-day Haiti, his father sent him to NYC at the age of 18 so that he couldn't be drafted into the Napoleonic Wars. I wish the biography had delved further into the fact that he was a slave owner and his positive interactions with native American tribes. Before Darwin, Audubon sensed that the Romantic notion of idyllic, paradise nature was incomplete. Emerson sensed this as well at the time, and Thoreau later seized both writers to create his works.
Also, read this 500 page sucker in one day lol.
Also, read this 500 page sucker in one day lol.
February 27, 2024
I really, really wanted to enjoy this book. I think it would be enjoyable for someone who has a lot of time on their hands to wade through every little detail of John James Audubon's life. It was intriguing to read about early American history during a time when exploration had gripped the hearts of many people and there weren't many accessible routes inland. It is a thorough biography to the point where it kept putting me to sleep. If it wasn't for the pictures scattered throughout, I wouldn't have made it as far as I did. It's a quality biography, and for that, it probably deserves 4 or 5 stars. But for my personal reading shelf, I just couldn't get through it.
September 7, 2024
This was a long haul but well worth it. A fascinating, affectionate biography of a truly driven genius. Also, the story of 19th century America and all its tragic flaws—the making of our country through the destruction of its edenic wilderness and aboriginal population. Audubon was a participant who, at the same time, recognized the immensity of the loss.
Audubon comes across as a loving husband and father as well as a man of great physical and mental stamina despite setbacks and doubts. I have a newfound appreciation for The Birds of America and its author. Rhodes has done an outstanding job.
Audubon comes across as a loving husband and father as well as a man of great physical and mental stamina despite setbacks and doubts. I have a newfound appreciation for The Birds of America and its author. Rhodes has done an outstanding job.
November 27, 2021
I was most interested in this book because of JJA’s interesting early life - he lived through the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolution and the War of 1812 all as a kid. The book didn’t talk about that as much as I wanted, but it was still a well written biography (those are hard to find in my opinion). It was surprisingly engaging considering I didn’t really know or care *that* much about JJA, and these always provide some interesting insights into life in that time era (1830s). Plus at one point he goes to early New Orleans and Louisiana plantation country, which was fun for me to read
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