Birds
at the National ZooUnder a Wild Sky: John James
Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America
William Souder. 2004. North
Point Press, New York. 367 pp., hardbound. $25.
Everyone is familiar with John James Audubon's magnificent paintings of American birds. His life-sized depictions of nearly 500 species of birds, in action and in the wild, are breathtaking, and in the opinion of some, still unsurpassed. Less well known is how far his birds departed from those conventionally illustrated in works of natural history, and thus how controversial they were at the time. As William Souder writes in Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America, "Audubon saw the world through a lens all his own." And, we learn in this fascinating book, this statement applies not only to how Audubon saw birds but also to how he lived his tumultuous, peripatetic life, from his illegitimate birth as Jean Rabin in what is now Haiti in 1785 to his death in New York City in 1851. Audubon the man was, aptly and to say the least, one strange bird.
Aububon's biography is not a simple tale of a talented man rising from humble origins to success as the painter of The Birds of America and author of Ornithological Biography. Rather, he lurched from relative prosperity to abject poverty (that included stints in jail for bankruptcy) and back again, as he failed in business as well as art and science in the United States, where he renamed and re-invented himself as an 18-year-old from France, before achieving acclaim and recognition in Great Britain nearly 25 years later.
His persona was hugely contradictory. An outstanding woodsman in the tradition of Daniel Boone and his ilk, able to live off the land for months at a time, Audubon was somewhat of a dandy who at times taught dancing and fencing to make ends meet. He craved attention and recognition as an ornithologist, but suffered fits of near-paralyzing shyness. He made friends and enemies about equally easily, and was very attractive to women. His wife, Lucy, through all the up and downs, including being left alone to support herself and two sons for years, remained devoted to him—and he to her, in spirit if not in practice.
Souder relates the story of the long, circuitous path that Audubon took to achieve publication of his life's work—The Birds of America—with drama and flair. He also separates the fact from the fiction of Audubon's own stories—Audubon became notorious for embellishing the truth and sometimes just making things up when he believed it served him better. After being elected to an elite Edinburgh scientific society (as John James Audubon, Esquire, of Louisiana—another lie), he proceeded to regale the members with a lecture on the behavior of rattlesnakes that was a complete invention. Says Souder, "Audubon may not have been a habitual liar, but he was a chronic fictional character" in his own life story.
The America of Audubon's times needed no embellishment, however, and Souder paints an evocative picture of the country's long-gone wilderness frontier as seen through Audubon's unique lens. In the early 1800s in Kentucky it was possible to see millions of passenger pigeons darken the sky and flocks of brightly colored Carolina parakeets eating cockleburs; to hear the howls of wolves at night and run into bears at midday; and to walk for days through deep forest without seeing another human being. And it was Audubon's acute powers of observation and empathy that enabled him to paint birds with such astonishing insight into their nature.
Souder also sets Audubon's life in the scientific context of the times, from the pre-Darwinian debates about the concept of species to the rivalry that simmered among the new country's first homegrown biologists. Americans were also seeking respect for their science from their snobbish European counterparts.
As familiar and beautiful as its images are, Audubon's Birds of America will appear all the more remarkable when, after reading Under a Wild Sky, you understand what it took to create such a masterpiece of science and art.
—Susan Lumpkin
William Souder will be at the National Zoo on September 23 to sign copies of Under a Wild Sky and talk about Audubon's life, times, and art. The book signing begins in the Visitor Center at 7 p.m.; the talk at 8 p.m. See www.fonz.org/lectures.htm for details and to make reservations for this free program.
ZooGoer 33(5) 2004.
Copyright 2004 Friends of the National Zoo.
All rights reserved.
