Audubon Revisited in Masterful Prints
Wednesday, March 17 1:33 pm
The Canada Lynx, an Audubon watercolor, was among the paintings gifted to the Museum by the artists granddaughters in the early 20th century. Courtesy of Joel Oppenheimer Gallery
Treasures abound in the American Museum of Natural History, from its famous dinosaur fossils to the Star of India sapphire and other dazzling finds in the Halls of Minerals and Gems. As for fine art, the exquisite landscapes of the habitat dioramas are there for all to see.
But visitors may be surprised to learn that the Museum’s collections include more than 2,500 original works by some of the greatest natural history artists of their time, including such iconic painters as John James Audubon, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Francis Lee Jaques, Titian Ramsay Peale, and Joseph Wolf.
Two years ago, the Museum put on view more than 50 original oil paintings, watercolors, and hand-colored stone lithographs in the exhibition The Unknown Audubons: Mammals of North America—so named because Audubon is best known for painting birds. The mammals appeared in the naturalist’s last great work, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, which was completed with the help of his two sons, John Woodhouse Audubon and Victor Gifford Audubon, and their father-in-law, the Reverend John Bachman. Early in the last century, many of the original paintings were gifted to the Museum by Audubon’s granddaughters, Florence and Maria R. Audubon.
Now, through a special collaboration with Joel Oppenheimer Gallery, full-size, fine-art prints of 14 of these rare mammal paintings, plus a portrait of Audubon painted by his son John, will be made available in limited editions. Oppenheimer, which has similar partnerships with New-York Historical Society and The Field Museum in Chicago, reproduces original works using ultra-high resolution digital imaging that takes into account the fragility and light-sensitivity of the works being captured. Some of the original paintings have penciled notes by the artist to the printmaker that would not have appeared in subsequent published lithographs but are faithfully reproduced in these prints.
Prices run from $600 to $1,500 for individual prints and $10,000 for a complete set of all 15, boxed as Audubon’s Quadrupeds: The Watercolors; The American Museum of Natural History Edition. Each print bears on the back the numbered and signed stamp of Joel Cracraft, Lamont Curator of Birds and Curator-in-Charge of the Department of Ornithology, where the original collection is housed.
In retrospect, the works in Audubon’s Viviparous Quadrupeds stand as a telling ecological statement. As the artist traveled the Missouri River in 1843 gathering images, the prairie—the largest ecosystem in North America—was being converted to towns and farmland, the commercial exploitation and slaughter of the buffalo had begun, and the wildlife he set out to document was starting to disappear. Today, less than one percent of this landscape remains unchanged by human activity.
“Having this spectacular body of Audubon’s work available to a wider audience is truly exciting,” says Cracraft, “The exacting standards used to produce these prints will further demonstrate the greatness of Audubon as an artist and naturalist.”—Joan Kelly Bernard
