The biography of
James Audubon has only recently been coming clear. And what
a picture! Audubon was born in Santo Domingo in 1785, the
illegitimate son of a French seafarer and plantation owner.
His mother was a French chambermaid.
Audubon himself spun contradictory yarns about his origins.
Some thought he might be the Dauphin -- heir to the French
throne. Biographer John Chancellor tells us flatly that
Audubon was only marginally literate ... indifferent to the
truth ... vulgar, infatuated with himself as the exotic
woodsman, the artist naturalist ... But, he adds, if this
harsh judgement is true, it is unimportant.
He quotes Cuvier,
who called Audubon's work "the most magnificent monument
[ever] raised to ornithology." Like too many great geniuses,
Audubon invented himself as he invented his art. He was in
Paris during the French Revolution -- a 7-year-old watching
beheadings. At 14 his father enrolled him in the French
Naval Academy. He had no talent for that. He wanted to draw.
Finally, if we can
believe the story, he studied art with the revolutionary
artist David. Early Audubon drawings show none of David's
classic rigor. And they are all of birds.
He moved to America in 1803 to dodge being drafted into
Napoleon's voracious army. From the age of 18 to 41 he
sought his fortune.
He married the
remarkable Lucy Bakewell in 1808. She taught school and
steadied his erratic life. He worked as a dancing master,
itinerant portrait artist, storekeeper, and taxidermist. It
was a life marred by debtor's prison and bankruptcy.
All the while
Audubon painted birds. Lucy and his birds were constants in
a life with no other visible center. Finally, with the help
of Lucy's savings, he took his portfolio to England in 1826.
He had, by then, created the most spectacular and complete
set of bird pictures ever made.
To Liverpool he
carried only his pictures. He left his reputation for
exaggeration and combat back at the New York dock.
Those pictures! Beautiful birds, flying, feasting, fighting
-- those birds nested in their American wilderness! Those
birds took England's heart. Success had finally found James
Audubon. Artistic and scientific societies alike embraced
him. Most important, he found an Edinburgh publisher
to print his "Birds of America" in a great double elephant
folio color book. That printing tour de force paved the way
for his other books.
Audubon's name
has, ever since, meant birds -- wheeling, turning, craning
-- daring us with their fierce beauty and freedom. Among the
birds, Audubon reached that perfect honesty -- that we all
find so elusive in the human world.
