John James Audubon
John James Audubon was born in Haiti in 1785. He was the son of Jean Audubon, a French naval officer, and Jeanne Rabine, his mistress who died shortly after his birth. At the age of six his father took him to France where he was raised.
He went to the United States in 1803 and married Lucy Bakewell in 1808. Together they raised two sons, Victor Gifford(born 1809), and John Woodhouse(born 1812). Two daughters died in infancy.
In 1820, after several unsuccessful business ventures, Audubon decided to begin his life’s ambition of painting every bird in the United States and its Territories. He also wanted to depict the birds in their life size which required the use of double elephant folio format His first engraver was William H. Lizars of Edinburgh, Scotland, who engraved the first ten plates. Because of a strike in the Lizars studio, Audubon went to the engraving firm of Robert Havell, Senior of London. Robert Havell, Junior ended up doing most of the work and completed the Birds of America in 1838. The process used was hand-colored aquatint engraving. The firm of J. Whatman of London provided the fine cotton wove paper that was used. The paper is watermarked “J. Whatman + date” or “J. Whatman Turkey Mill + date”. Audubon went on to produce the Octavo Edition of the Birds of America as well as the Folio and Octavo Editions of the Quadrupeds of North America, working along side with his son John Woodhouse on the Quadrupeds.
Audubon died in 1851 at his estate, Minnie’s Land, on the Hudson River above New York City.
Havell Edition
Plate 71-Winter Hawk
The Havell Edition refers to the original hand-colored aquatint engravings made for the Birds of America by Robert Havell in London. William Lizars engraved the first ten plates in Edinburgh before the work was transferred to Havell. The prints were made between 1827 and 1838. The paper used for the Birds of America was made by J. Whatman and is 100% cotton wove paper. The paper is watermarked “J. Whatman” or “J. Whatman Turkey Mill” with the year included. The size of the paper is double elephant folio, the largest that was available and allowed the birds to be depicted in their full life size.
Amsterdam Edition
Plate 271-Ruffed Grous
The “Amsterdam Edition” refers to the first full-scale facsimile reprinting of all 435 plates from the original Havell Edition of the Birds of America. This facsimile edition was published jointly by the Johnson Reprint Company of New York, and Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd. of Amsterdam, in Amsterdam between 1971-1972. The original double elephant folio format was used, depicting the birds in their life size.
The original Havell copy that was used is housed in the Teyler Museum in Haarlem, Holland, and was sold to them directly by Audubon's son. The printing was done at N.V. Fotolitho Inrichting Drommel at Zandvoort, located in the Netherlands. Multi-color offset in up to eight different colors was used.
The paper for this edition was manufactured from 100% unbleached cotton rags at the Dutch paper mill of G. Schut & Zonen, founded in 1625. The paper has a distinctive Audubon watermark in the margin to identify this particular edition. This work was limited in production to 250 copies.
Princeton Edition
Plate 236-Night Heron
The Princeton Audubon Edition is limited to 1500 copies and the only direct camera Audubon lithographs ever made. Up to 11 color plates with specially developed fade-proof inks were used giving absolute color fidelity to the actual original. The Princeton Edition uses very heavy archival paper which is recommended by the Library of Congress for archives and is specially toned to match the actual color of the antique originals. Princeton Audubon prints are permanently displayed at The Royal Society of London, to which Audubon belonged as a Fellow.
Octavo Edition
Plate 295-Dusky Grouse
Audubon began work on the Octavo Edition almost immediately after he finished the original Birds of America Double Elephant folio. He was very involved in the work and employed techniques such as camera lucida to reduce the size of the original work. The First, or Royal Octavo Edition was printed by J.T. Bowen in Philadelphia between 1840 and 1844 using hand-colored lithography. The octavo format proved to be so popular that more octavo editions were made.