A handsome man by most accounts, though strangely bird obsessed and sometimes most curiously dressed: John James in 'his hunter's garb, complete with wolfskin coat and double-barrelled shotgun', in his pursuit of birds to shoot and draw... and maybe eat: an abundance of partridges; a rare fat hermit thrush; twenty-six delicate starlings, not baked in a pie but picked clean, for supper, rounded off with a maggoty cheese. The violence depicted in his pictures – bird attacking bird, ripping prey apart – shocking British readers; though reading of his reconstruction methods it's unclear whether this sight was nature-seen or artist-created. As to his own violence it is hoped he had the good sense to withhold the more 'savage' details when in drawing-room society, and stick instead to safer subject matters: America, the woods, and owl hooting, though the ladies I'm sure could have done without his imitative hoots and Red Indian war cries.
English ladies, however well brought up or glamorous, had curious ideas; were much surprised he had not been devoured by wolves, tigers, bears. One was shocked by this method of eating a buttered ear of corn; another, a raw (uncooked) tomato, which it seemed had never been done before, at least not under her watchful gaze. And then there was the small scale of the English countryside, which when compared to the more borderless, open and wilder territories of America made him feel restricted, and yet here his enormously gigantic work found an audience. Here, in spite of difficulties, The Birds of America was launched
Picture credit: John James Audubon, 1826, John Syme, The White House Historical Association (source: Wikipedia).
See
Audubon's Elephant by
Duff Hart-Davis.
Adapted from journal, January 2022.
