The Oppenheimer Field Museum Edition of Audubon Havell Edition Pl. 206, Summer or Wood Duck beautifully captures the artist’s deep reverence for nature and keen artistic acumen.
Produced in a limited edition of 150 as part of The Oppenheimer Field Museum Edition of Audubon’s Fifty Best Birds, this modern fine art print is part of a museum-sanctioned publication of Audubon’s most historic and desirable images. Executed to exacting standards, this print is made with the finest quality archival pigments on rag watercolor paper and embossed with the Oppenheimer Editions and Field Museum logos. Immerse yourself in good company with Audubon’s 50 Best Birds!
About the Birds of America
John James Audubon’s Birds of America is a highly influential work of American art and ornithological study. The Audubon prints feature detailed illustrations of North American bird species in their natural habitats, portrayed at life-size. Audubon spent two decades on this project, exploring the wilderness of America, gathering specimens, sketching birds, and meticulously documenting his observations.
Audubon’s illustrations are known for their remarkable detail and ability to capture the unique characteristics of each species. To ensure accuracy, he used various methods such as extensive field observation and referencing taxidermy specimens. He also developed a technique of wiring freshly caught birds to a gridded board, allowing him to position them realistically and accurately depict them in scale, color, and movement.
The Oppenheimer Field Museum Edition of Audubon’s Fifty Best is the first facsimile edition to accurately replicate the quality of the original Audubon edition of Birds of America completed in the 1830s. This publication achieves an esthetic quality that we can endorse as comparable to the originals. The remarkable similarity to the hand-colored engravings cannot be overstated. Each print is made on 310gsm, acid-free, cotton, watercolor paper. Each print is embossed by hand with the Oppenheimer Editions stamp and the official Field Museum stamp. The verso of each print is stamped, numbered, and signed.
About John James Audubon
America’s most revered artist-naturalist, John James Audubon (1785—1851), is renowned for his extraordinary undertaking to record The Birds of America & The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. The images he created are icons of 19th-century art and capture the nascent stages of American natural history.
Audubon’s muti-decade venture resulted in the publication of his monumental folio The Birds of America, which documented over 700 bird species on 435 plates. In a similar manner and with the help of his two sons and his friend Reverend John Bachman, Audubon later produced The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, which contained 150 plates depicting the mammals of North America. Audubon’s folios were seismic in the fields of ornithology and mammalogy and set a new precedent for natural history illustration.
About Oppenheimer Editions
Established in 1999, our publishing company Oppenheimer Editions was developed in order to produce modern facsimiles of historic works of art. Marrying cutting-edge digital printing technologies with canonical works of art, Oppenheimer Editions has partnered with prestigious museums to make their holdings accessible to the public as fine art prints. Works from the New-York Historical Society’s unrivaled collections of John James Audubon’s watercolors and the Hudson River School paintings are examples of art that otherwise would be unobtainable.
Among the institutional collections we have partnered with are the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Our Oppenheimer Editions prints are not mere reproductions. Rather, they are limited-edition fine art prints made with the finest quality archival pigments on rag watercolor paper and executed to exacting standards.
For more information about Audubon Havell Edition Pl. 206, Summer or Wood Duck, email us at [email protected] or check out our articles Investigating Audubon’s 50 Best Watercolors and Audubon Collecting Guide.
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