Audubon and the Captain
Sep. 11th, 2010 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anteros_lmcYesterday the BBC reported that Sotheby's will auction a rare copy of Audubon's Birds of America from the collection of Lord Hesketh in December. Audubon himself had a colourful life but he also has an interesting connection to the Age of Sail.
Audubon was born Jean Rabin in Sant Domingue in 1785, the illegitimate son of French naval lieutenant turned privateer and plantation owner, Jean Audubon. After the Sant Domingue slave rebellion of 1788 Audubon Sr sold his plantations and returned to France where he remarried and raised his son, whom he renamed Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon, in Nantes. Audubon Sr intended his son to follow him into the navy and Jean-Jacques was sent to sea at the age of 12. However life at sea was not to the boy's taste, he suffered form sea sickness and failed his lieutenants exam. Instead Jean-Jacques returned home and pursued his real passion, birds. Audubon father and son lived through the upheavals of the French revolution until in 1803 Audubon Sr procured a false passport for his son to sail to America and thus evade conscription to the Napoloenic wars. Audubon was 18 when he reached America and changed his name again to John James Audubon. Audubon pursued various business interests in the States but still devoted much of his time to ornithology. By 1824 he had already gained a reputation for his fine bird paintings and was seeking a publisher for his work. Having had little success finding a publisher in the US, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, the French naturalist and nephew of Napoleon, suggested he seek patronage in Europe.
In 1826 Audubon took his collection of bird paintings to Britain where he attracted considerable recognition and also the investment he had sought. Between 1826 and 1839 Audubon visited Edinburgh five times where he met many influential scientific and literary figures of of the day including Sir Walter Scott, who he greatly admired, William Home Lizars, the engraver who produced the first plates for Birds of America, Robert Knox, the anatomist whose career was later ruined by the Burke and Hare body snatching scandal and Robert Jameson keeper of Edinburgh University's natural history museum. Jameson invited Audubon to present a lecture at the Wernerian Natural History Society, an off-shoot of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, where a young Charles Darwin was in the audience.
Many of these influential men where introduced to Audubon by one Basil Hall who acted as Audubon's social manager. That's the same Basil Hall who anyone who has read Dean King's Every Man Will Do His Duty will remember as the midshipman of the Leander and chronicler of the unfortunate middies cur Shakings. By the late 1820s Captain Basil Hall was a prominent member or Georgian Edinburgh's high society and a popular travel author in his own right. Hall's own father Sir James Hall was a former president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
With the assistance of influential and well connected men such as Hall, Audubon was able to raise sufficient subscriptions to allow him to publish his four volume masterpiece in 1838. Birds of Americacost £29,000 to print, contains 435 plates showing 1,065 life-size illustrations of 489 bird species, several of which are now extinct. Only 200 editions were published of which 119 survive and 108 are owned by museums and libraries. The last edition that came to auction ten years ago fetched £5.5 million.
The National Library of Scotland, which I believe owns a complete edition of Birds of America, held an exhibition on Audubon's life, work and legacy in 2006.
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anything_aos
Audubon was born Jean Rabin in Sant Domingue in 1785, the illegitimate son of French naval lieutenant turned privateer and plantation owner, Jean Audubon. After the Sant Domingue slave rebellion of 1788 Audubon Sr sold his plantations and returned to France where he remarried and raised his son, whom he renamed Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon, in Nantes. Audubon Sr intended his son to follow him into the navy and Jean-Jacques was sent to sea at the age of 12. However life at sea was not to the boy's taste, he suffered form sea sickness and failed his lieutenants exam. Instead Jean-Jacques returned home and pursued his real passion, birds. Audubon father and son lived through the upheavals of the French revolution until in 1803 Audubon Sr procured a false passport for his son to sail to America and thus evade conscription to the Napoloenic wars. Audubon was 18 when he reached America and changed his name again to John James Audubon. Audubon pursued various business interests in the States but still devoted much of his time to ornithology. By 1824 he had already gained a reputation for his fine bird paintings and was seeking a publisher for his work. Having had little success finding a publisher in the US, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, the French naturalist and nephew of Napoleon, suggested he seek patronage in Europe. In 1826 Audubon took his collection of bird paintings to Britain where he attracted considerable recognition and also the investment he had sought. Between 1826 and 1839 Audubon visited Edinburgh five times where he met many influential scientific and literary figures of of the day including Sir Walter Scott, who he greatly admired, William Home Lizars, the engraver who produced the first plates for Birds of America, Robert Knox, the anatomist whose career was later ruined by the Burke and Hare body snatching scandal and Robert Jameson keeper of Edinburgh University's natural history museum. Jameson invited Audubon to present a lecture at the Wernerian Natural History Society, an off-shoot of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, where a young Charles Darwin was in the audience. Many of these influential men where introduced to Audubon by one Basil Hall who acted as Audubon's social manager. That's the same Basil Hall who anyone who has read Dean King's Every Man Will Do His Duty will remember as the midshipman of the Leander and chronicler of the unfortunate middies cur Shakings. By the late 1820s Captain Basil Hall was a prominent member or Georgian Edinburgh's high society and a popular travel author in his own right. Hall's own father Sir James Hall was a former president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.With the assistance of influential and well connected men such as Hall, Audubon was able to raise sufficient subscriptions to allow him to publish his four volume masterpiece in 1838. Birds of Americacost £29,000 to print, contains 435 plates showing 1,065 life-size illustrations of 489 bird species, several of which are now extinct. Only 200 editions were published of which 119 survive and 108 are owned by museums and libraries. The last edition that came to auction ten years ago fetched £5.5 million.
The National Library of Scotland, which I believe owns a complete edition of Birds of America, held an exhibition on Audubon's life, work and legacy in 2006.
Cross posted to
anything_aos
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Date: 2010-09-11 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-11 05:05 pm (UTC)Btw I went to see Glenlee returning to Yorkhill Quay on Wednesday but she beat me to it! She was due to arrive back at about 16.00 but I arrived just before then and she had already docked. She looks very smart!
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