Overview: John James Audubon (1785–1851) combined his love of nature with his artistic talent to produce some of the most beautiful and lifelike depictions of birds ever created. This exhibition presents forty-seven of the artist's hand-colored etchings selected from the Gallery's early edition of the publication, The Birds of America (1826-1838), one of only two known complete sets preserved in their original, unbound state. Audubon's dream of recording every native bird of North America consumed nearly twenty years of his life and was realized with the publication of this mammoth edition of 435 hand-colored etchings, all based on his vivid life-size drawings. Some of the set's most celebrated and outstanding prints will be on view, including American Flamingo(1838), Carolina Parrot (1827), and Ivory-billed Woodpecker (1829), a species thought to be extinct until its recent sighting in Arkansas. Also included in the exhibition is one of Audubon's great oil paintings, the superb work Osprey and Weakfish (1829), a new gift to the Gallery from Richard Mellon Scaife.
Osprey and Weakfish
