Step into the untamed world of North American wildlife with Audubon’s Watercolors Pl. 23, Black Rat, a rare and breathtaking preparatory painting for his Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America folio.
This extraordinary museum-sanctioned facsimile showcases Audubon’s artistic acumen and deep appreciation for the native fauna of the continent. Published in a limited edition of 200, this fine art print is created with the utmost care and precision using high-quality archival materials and techniques to achieve complete fidelity to the original watercolor and to ensure its preservation for generations to come. An ideal addition to your hunting lodge, office interior, or domestic space, this print promises to animate your walls and refine your art collection.
About Audubon’s Watercolors – The American Museum of Natural History Edition
Oppenheimer Editions collaborated with the American Museum of Natural History to make available a selection of John James Audubon’s original watercolors from The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America that are housed in their collection. This unique edition offers actual-size limited edition fine art prints of fifteen of Audubon’s mammals and a portrait of Audubon painted by his son John Woodhouse Audubon.
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 Pl. 23, Black Rat, email us at [email protected] or check out our articles Discovering Audubon’s Animals in The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America and Investigating Audubon’s 50 Best Watercolors.
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