Audubon’s Watercolors Octavo Pl. 280, Black Tern

The Audubon’s Watercolors Octavo Pl. 280, Black Tern combines the beauty of John James Audubon’s original paintings with the convenient and attractive miniature octavo size to create a delightful avian experience on any wall.

Printed with archival pigments on 100% rag watercolor paper, the Audubon’s Watercolors Octavo edition prints come framed in a ¾” Beaded Louis XVI gold metal leaf frame with an archival rag mat and UV-resistant glazing. The miniature size and delightful imagery of Audubon’s Watercolor Octavos make for excellent groupings and solitary displays alike. As fully framed works of art, our octavos are excellent gifts for the art or nature lover in your life.

About John James Audubon’s Watercolor Octavos

The Audubon Watercolor Octavos are created directly from Audubon’s original watercolor paintings owned by the New-York Historical Society. Oppenheimer Editions was granted special access to the museum collections to create these exacting facsimiles. Working in concert with the museum curators, Joel Oppenheimer meticulously proofed the images to ensure complete fidelity to the originals at the Museum. Issued in a limited edition of 500, the Watercolor Octavos capture the beauty and majesty of all 474 of Audubon’s preparatory mixed-media paintings for his monumental folio, The Birds of America. Viewing these magnificent birds is truly a unique experience. A portion of all proceeds directly support the New-York Historical Society.

About John James Audubon

America’s most revered artist-naturalist, John James Audubon (1785—1851), is renowned for his extraordinary undertaking to visually record the birds and mammals of North America. His publications The Birds of America & The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America are icons of 19th-century art and capture the nascent stages of American natural history.

Born in 1785 in Les Cayes, Santo Domingo (Haiti) to a Creole mother and French father, Audubon spent the early years of his life in France but moved to America at age 18. It was during this time that his appreciation for birds flourished and he developed a keen artistic acumen for rendering wildlife. It was not until 1819 when Audubon was married and the father of two sons, that he embraced the life of artist-naturalist and embarked on his venture through the backwoods of America with the intent of illustrating the avian life he encountered there.

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’s Watercolors Octavo Pl. 280, Black Tern, email us at [email protected] or check out our articles Investigating Audubon’s 50 Best Watercolors and Audubon’s Miniature Folio – The Octavo Edition of Birds of America.

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