Audubon, John James, 1785-1851

Naturalist, ornithologist, and artist, known for his Birds of America.

Audubon was an American artist and ornithologost.

John James Audubon was a painter and ornithologist. Born in Les Coyes (Haiti) on April 26, 1786, he was raised in revolutionary France. He settled in Kentucky in 1806. After a store he owned went bankrupt, he left his wife and two young sons in Kentucky and went to New Orlean where he attempted to earn his living as a portrait painter and art teacher. After 1820, he shifted his focus to painting and writing about birds and mammals. Audubon traveled throughout North America in search of specimens. Between 1826 and 1839, he spent much time in Great Britain trying to get his work published. Audubon was the compiler of "Birds of America," "Quadrupeds of America," and "Ornithological Biographies." From 1832 until his death in 1851, Audubon was assisted in his work by his sons, John Woodhouse and Victor Gifford. Audubon became an honary member of the National Academy in 1833.

American naturalist and artist.

Painter, illustrator, ornithologist and naturalist; New York.

Louisiana naturalist, artist and author of books on ornithology.

John James Audubon was an artist and naturalist.

The Birds of America was published 1827-1838. In published work, plates 251-285, 287, 289-290 are dated 1835; plates 286, 288, 291-299 are dated 1836.

Louisiana naturalist, artist, and author of books on ornithology.

Audubon was an American artist and ornithologist.

American naturalist.

American naturalist, ornithologist, painter, and illustrator.

Artist and naturalist.

American naturalist, author and artist.

Artist and ornithologist.

Charles Lucian Bonaparte was a naturalist and ornithologist.

American naturalist best known for his major work The Birds of America and The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America .

John James Audubon (1785-1851) was an American painter and naturalist.

American artist.

The vertical files of the Whitney Library originated with the Museum's founding in 1930 and include research materials on 20th century American art. Central to the collection are the files of the American Art Research Council, an agency administered by the Whitney Museum between 1942 and 1948, in cooperation with thirty museums and university art departments, to document and authenticate American art. The library now serves as a repository for the AARC records. The Council compiled records of the works of leading American artists, including information as to medium, size, signature, date, history, owners, exhibitions, reproductions and auction sales.

John James Audubon was an ornithologist, artist, and naturalist. He was illegitimately born to a French slave trader and a Creole woman on April 26, 1785 in Les Cayes, Saint-Domingue in the West Indies, or what is now Haiti. Later in his childhood he moved to France, and when he was 18 moved to the United States. Audubon began to develop an interest in North American birds as he unsuccessfully moved through careers as a mine owner, a shopkeeper, and a businessman. Eventually settling into whatever odd jobs he could obtain, Audubon began seeking a printer in Europe to publish his drawings of American birds. In 1838, Audubon finally published his The Birds of America through publisher Robert Havell of London. From 1839 to his death on January 27, 1851, Audubon remained primarily in New York, working on another edition of his book and a new book, Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, with his sons.

Artist and ornithologist.

From 1827 to 1839 John James Audubon published his most famous work, Birds of America. The work was first issued serially in folio sets of five plates each. As sufficient numbers became available, volumes were also offered. During this period, Audubon was forced to spend much of his time seeking subscribers to the work in Great Britain, continental Europe and America.

Artist, hunter, naturalist.

Painter and naturalist. He began drawing birds as a teenager. In 1803 he moved to his father's estate near Philadelphia, where he spent his time hunting, experimenting with birds, and also drawing the birds he hunted. He failed as a shopkeeper and in other business enterprises while he pursued his two real passions: observing and drawing wildlife which proved to highly successful.

John James Audubon "ornithologist, artist, and naturalist who became particularly well known for his drawings and paintings of North American birds." -- "Audubon, John James." Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Academic ed. http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9011224 (Retrieved February 8, 2010)

Pierre Joseph Redouté was a "French botanical painter. He became a favoured artist at the court of France, patronized by kings from Louis XVI to Louis-Philippe. His delicate botanical prints were not only framed as pictures but also used for china patterns. His Les Liliacées (1802--15) contained 500 plates of lilies. However, roses became his specialty; Les Roses (1817--21) is considered his finest series, and its classic images are still widely reproduced." -- "Redouté, Pierre Joseph." Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Academic ed. http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9473172 (Retrieved February 8, 2010)

Artist, painter

Artist, ornithologist and naturalist John James Audubon was born in France, traveled to America in 1804, stayed for a while in Philadelphia and came to Kentucky in 1807. In partnership with Ferdinand Rozier, Audubon bought a stock of goods in New York and went to Louisville, Kentucky where the two of them opened a general store. In 1810 they moved their business to Henderson, Kentucky. While in Kentucky, Audubon's interests in natural history and ornithology continued, but the business partnership with Rozier was not a success and was dissolved. In association with others Audubon had several other successful enterprises, the last being a steam grist and lumber mill which failed in 1819 after which time Audubon was jailed for debt, released on a plea of bankruptcy and left for Cincinnati in the winter of 1819.

Painter, illustrator, ornithologist.

Born Haiti, West Indies.

Bonaparte, Charles Lucien, Prince of Canino (1803-1857, APS, 1824). Charles Lucien Bonaparte, French naturalist and ornithologist, was a nephew of the Emperor Napoleon, the son of the Emperor’s younger brother Lucien.

Charles Lucien Bonaparte, was raised in Italy and shared his father Lucien’s republican political values. He received an extensive scientific education in Italian universities. In 1822 at the age of nineteen he married his cousin Zenaida-Charlotte-Julie, daughter of Joseph, king of Naples and Spain, and brought her to live in the United States for six years. The couple had twelve children.

Before the age of twenty he discovered a warbler, then unknown to science. And would make his greatest contributions to zoology, even though he had begun his scientific career with several essays in botany. While in the United States Bonaparte published numerous ornithological notes in the Journal of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences. He continued Alexander Wilson’s work on birds, updating the latter’s American Ornithology. He also sponsored the then unknown John James Audobon for membership in the Academy of Natural Science in 1824, although Audobon was not elected.

Returning to Europe in 1828 at the age of 25, Bonaparte settled in Italy and began a period of major political activity. He advocated for the organization of scientific congresses that also provided an opportunity for meetings of independents and reformers. After the accession of the initially liberal Pope Pius IX in 1846, Bonaparte became a member of the Pope’s party, but proceeded to move in a more radical direction, affiliating with the radicals and joining the Supreme Junta that seized power in the Roman states during the Revolutions of 1848. After the flight of Pope Pius in November 1848, Charles Lucien became deputy for Viterbo in the Assemblée Nationale Romaine; he was eventually elected Vice-President of the Assemblée. He also served on a commission to draft a constitution for the Roman Republic. When his cousin Louis Napoleon sent French troops to restore the Pope, Bonaparte participated in the defense of Rome with the Republican army. After its defeat and the fall of the Roman Republic, he fled with his family back to France, first to Marseilles and then Orléans, where he was arrested and released. Louis Napoleon ordered him out of the county and he set sail from Le Havre for England.

While in England, Bonaparte attended the 1849 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Birmingham, then visited the Scottish ornithologist Sir William Jardine. During his sojourn in England Bonaparte started work on a classification of every bird in the world, visiting museums across Europe to study their collections. The following year, 1851, he was allowed to return to France, where he and his family settled in Paris. At this point he gave up politics and concentrated exclusively on his scientific endeavors.

Bonaparte became interested in the principles of biological classification as early as 1831. In his early work he departed from the concepts of Georges Cuvier, of whom he was quite critical. He classified Insectivora before the Rodentia and separated the Chiroptera from the Primates. He made use of location, structure and the relationships of the branchiae in his classification of fish. Also, in developing classifications, he considered physiological data and morphology. Consequently, he raised the Batrachia to a subclass, then united the saurians and ophidians (Reptilia). He devoted the final years of his life to establishing a definitive classification of zoological groups, publishing synopses, conspectuses, and catalogs of the fauna of France. To this end, he not only encouraged fellow zoologists to study local fauna, but in 1857 conceived a general work in collaboration with Victor Meunier on the fauna of France entitled Histoire naturelle generale et particuliere des animaux qui vivent en France. Bonaparte’s death later that year prevented the realization of the project.

Charles Lucien Bonaparte was deeply interested in the French Muséum d’histoire naturelle and hoped to see the addition of a special gallery for native fauna. He bequeathed his library, containing works on the natural sciences, meterology, history and politics, as well as his extensive correspondence, to the Muséum.