Artists in 60 Seconds: John James Audubon

Illustration, Naturalist

April 26, 1785, Les Cayes, Santo Domingo (modern Haiti)

Audubon's full name at birth was Jean Rabine. He was the illegitimate offspring of French sea captain Lieutenant Jean Audubon and Spanish–Creole chambermaid Jeanne Rabine, the latter of whom was killed in a slave uprising a few months after her son's birth.

Lieutenant Audubon brought three year old Jean back to France in 1788 and, along with his new (and legitimate) wife, formally adopted the boy. Jean Rabine then became Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon. He went by this name until he moved to America and styled himself thereafter as "John James Laforest Audubon."

On the heels of a childhood spent largely outdoors in the countryside near Nantes, it is believed that Audubon went to Paris sometime before 1802 to train as an artist. He later claimed that Jacques-Louis David had been one of his teachers, although there is no surviving record of such.

In any case, whatever training he did (or didn't) receive was short-lived. In 1803 Jean Audubon sent his son to America for two reasons. (1) Ostensibly, he'd purchased an estate near Philadelphia that needed overseeing and, (2) primarily, the youth had turned 18 and was due at any moment to be conscripted into Napoleon's army.

It was at Mill Grove, the Pennsylvania estate, that John James Audubon met the great passions of his life: American birds and his neighbor's daughter, Lucy Bakewell (whom he married in 1808). He began collecting all things ornithological and making pencil and pastel sketches of birds. As his confidence as an artist grew, he ventured into watercolors--the medium he would most often employ for the rest of his career.

It quickly became evident that Audubon was ill-suited to oversee an estate or, indeed, much of anything that kept him away from the study of birds. He would go on to try his hand at several other business ventures, all of which failed. Audubon largely became a traveling artist, teaching occasional pupils, but always painting local birds and their natural habitats.

After finally declaring bankruptcy in 1819, his only goal in life became to publish a folio of his bird paintings. He had to take his work to London in order to make Birds of America a success in America, but the rest, as they say, is art history.

Audubon is best known today for his highly dramatic bird and animal watercolors (along with around 70 oil canvases), as well as the Society (formed in 1886) named in his honor.

• The Birds of America, 1827-38; the original, "double elephant" folios
• The Ornithological Biographies, 1831–38 (text complementing Birds...)
• The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, 1845-48

January 27, 1851, New York City, New York

• I am at work, and have done much, but I wish I had eight pairs of hands and another body to shoot the specimens. -- from a letter dated October 11, 1829

Sources and Further Reading

• Audubon, John James, and Lucy Audubon (ed.).
  The Life of John James Audubon, the Naturalist
  New York : G. P. Putnam & Son, 1869.
  Full text available online.

• Meyers, Amy. "Audubon, John James (Laforest)"
  Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, 22 February 2008.

Read a review of Grove Art Online.

• Reynolds, Gary A. (ed.) John James Audubon and his Sons (exh. cat.).
  New York : Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, 1982.
  Buy Direct

• Rodgers, David. "Audubon, John James"
  The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Ed. Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford University Press, 2001.
  Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, 22 February 2008.

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