Thursday, November 14, 2013

Birds of a Feather

 
Lets take flight shall we?????
 
I have always loved John James Audubon's art work, and thought if I had a huge indoor garden conservancy , I would love to plaster the walls with his framed artwork of bird paintings. They were painted so realistic and with such detail, and so large. I recently just picked up blank stationary cards as Thank-you cards. Yes. I still send hand written thank you's!!!!!
 
 

John James Audubon is best known for The Birds of America, a book of 435 images, portraits of every bird then known in the United States – painted and reproduced in the size of life. Its creation cost Audubon eighteen years of monumental effort in finding the birds, making the book, and selling it to subscribers. Audubon also wrote thousands of pages about birds (Ornithological Biography); he’d completed half of a collection of paintings of mammals (The Viviparous Quadrapeds of North America) when his eyesight failed in 1846.

                                                                        By far my favorite

The man himself, too, seems much larger than life. John James Audubon was a mix of characteristics, almost always to extremes: he was not just a little anything. He was the kind of excessive person who might show up for a two-month ocean voyage bearing, say, three dogs, two tail-less cats, and 265 live birds – which is what he brought in 1836. He was of course excessively handsome: “a handsomer man I never saw,” one neighbor in Pennsylvania wrote, and another (in Kentucky) crooned that “his eyes were an eagle’s in brightness, his teeth were white and even, his hair a beautiful chestnut color, very glossy and curly.” And he was inordinately vain – with “muscles of steel,” he crowed, and a “handsome figure.” He especially loved that hair: “My locks flew freely from under my hat, and every lady that I met looked at them and then at me until – she could see no more.” When Audubon had his “luxuriant” (his word) hair cut, he wrote a little obituary to it in his journal, with a heavy black border framing the page.
 
 
 
 
 


Are they not beautiful?

12 comments:

  1. My next book for the hordes of nieces and nephews involves flamingos. I have been doing character sketches. Today I'm feeling a little intimidated...
    lololol

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  2. Anonymous11/14/2013

    I love Audubon's work. I hadn't seen it in ages, though. Thanks for posting this! :-)

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  3. I live not too far from mill grove, audubon's home.

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  4. I would love to see postage stamps from his designs, or did I miss them?

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  5. One of things that makes your jaw drop when you walk into a gallery and see an Audubon is how incredibly life-like the birds are. I enjoy his works.

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  6. Beautiful work. Fascinating man by the sounds.

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  7. Handwritten thank you notes on art card stationery? You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.

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  8. I remember going to see a small exhibit of his work here once, and couldn't believe the amount of detail in his work.

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  9. Boy, imagine my surprise to see the bird of a different variety here for once! His work was quite amazing.

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  10. They are so naturally unnaturally looking, if that makes sense.

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  11. The flamingo has always been I'm favorite........so fun!

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  12. You always have such a interesting post. And to answer the above, I do believe they did have postage stamps a couple times.

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Go ahead darling, tell me something fabulous!