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Audubon - Havell Edition

Our magnificent inventory of John James Audubon originals is the focal point of our collection. His work proved the perfect metaphor for the pioneering spirit that defined nineteenth century America. Historically, Audubon's art represents a major innovation in the way birds were painted. Depicting birds as specimens, in traditional formal poses, was characteristic of ornithological art at the time. Audubon had the uncanny ability to infuse his work with a bountiful enthusiasm for nature. His emphasis was on the bird as a living organism; expressing the beauty and vitality of the creature integrated with its natural environment. While rendering the precise detail of the subject was Audubon's central goal, he combined birds and settings into dynamic units. Audubon's paintings exhibit a natural balance between space and form. His graceful and masterfully designed compositions are clearly the work of a great artist. Hailed in his lifetime for his artistic achievement, his status as an artist has continued to increase and his work remains unchallenged as the superlative example of its genre.

The illegitimate son of a French naval officer and a chambermaid, Audubon was born in Saint-Domingue, what is now Haiti, in 1785. In 1803, to avoid conscription into Napoleon's army, his father sent him to America to take charge of a property near Philadelphia. Embarking on this journey, with his name changed from Jean, he became, as he said, "another person", and thus began a fantastic and unconventional life filled with romance, struggle and adventure.

It was in the British Isles that Audubon's long search for a backer came to an end, and he was able to start publication of his life's great work. In Edinburgh, the Scottish engraver, W. H. Lizars, began to produce the very first plates for Birds of America. However, as fate would have it, after the completion of only ten plates, Lizars' colorists went on strike, and once again, Audubon was forced to continue his quest. Audubon's dream finally found fruition with Robert Havell, a renowned London engraver. The portfolio of Birds of America, comprised of 435 hand-colored engravings, took twelve years, from 1826 to 1838, to complete. Havell also retouched Lizars' original efforts, adding aquatint to the engraving, and on those ten plates the Havell name appears alongside that of the Scottish engraver's.

Audubon sold 175 subscriptions to Birds of America, each of which commanded the princely sum of $1,000 the cost of a substantial home at the time. His subscribers were indeed the very wealthy of the world. The prints were not bound, but distributed in loose folio form in numbered groups of five. Each print bears the plate number in the upper right hand corner and the subscription number, indicating the group of five prints, in the upper left.

Audubon insisted that the engravings accurately convey the sometimes monumental proportions of the life-sized images in his original watercolors. To achieve this the edition was published on sheets measuring 26 inches by 39 inches, called double elephant by the printing trade. The resulting engravings are among the largest ever made. Still Audubon often altered the larger bird's natural postures, creatively composing the figure to fit within the dimensions of the sheet.

The double elephant folio size was used consistently throughout. Smaller subjects were executed on smaller copper plates, hence the larger borders surrounding the birds in some prints. The natural deckle edge of the paper was usually trimmed, creating a clean, uniform page for binding; therefore a certain tolerance is allowed in what is considered a full sheet.

A maximum of 200 complete sets of Birds of America were made. Of these, more than 100 are intact in library and museum collections worldwide. In the more than 150 years since they were first printed by Havell, few of the sets have been broken or made available for sale.

Kenyon Oppenheimer, Inc. specializes in these rare, original engravings, maintaining an extensive inventory, many in exceptionally fine condition.

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