John James Aububon draws every bird in North America, 1827-38
In 1827, John James Audubon, enlisted the aid of British engraver Robert Havell to translate for reproduction a collection of 435 North American Birds drawn to scale. The drawings were a product of a decade of amateur ornithological research hunting, skinning, and painting birds across America on 30” x 40” sheets of watercolor paper, the largest size commercially available at the time. The water color drawings were meticulously translated to finely etched lines and aquatint color washes onto the largest available print size, a double-elephant portfolio. Under the guise of objectivity, these birds, represented at scale, reproduce a set of fictions authored by the amateur and his engraver. Due to paper size limitations, large birds are drawn from study skins are contorted and positioned awkwardly as if in flight on imagined backdrops. Further, once removed from the original bird of study, the engraver Havell invents intricately etch textures not present in nature to translate Audubons washes to sharp lines. The map is not the territory.
