Life of John James Audubon a cherished American tale

AUDUBON: LIFE AND ART IN THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS, by Shirley Streshinsky, Villard Books, 407 pages, $25.

All his life John James Audubon was driven by the compulsion to draw birds, and when he emigrated from France to America at age 18 he made the resolve to draw every bird in America. From this ambition sprang his “Birds of America,” a collection of 435 plates of life-size birds printed and hand-colored on double-elephant folio pages, the largest then extant, that is one of this country’s greatest national treasures.

His climb to success was painfully slow, obstructed by traditional ornithologists who disapproved of his insistence on drawing birds in realistic settings, signing them “Drawn from nature by J.J. Audubon.” Because he could not interest a qualified American engraver in the production of “Birds of America,” Audubon left his family and settled in England where for 12 years he supported himself by painting portraits and ingratiating himself with Britain’s nobility and VIPs as a means of advancing the cause of his magnum opus, a series of four volumes that he sold by subscription.

In the first major Audubon biography in 25 years, Streshinsky describes how Audubon, soon after his arrival in Liverpool, went to the home of the wealthy, prominent Rathbones, a family whose members had consented to look at his portfolio. “Panting like the winged pheasant, he opened it. As Audubon removed the tissue and lifted each drawing to the light, those gathered in the room were stunned,” a friend of the family reported. “They had never seen anything like these pictures; they could not say enough in praise of the birds that appeared before them, flying, fighting, diving, wings outspread.” Small wonder that the elated 41-year-old Audubon rejoiced in his journal that his birds had been seen and they had conquered. It was a triumph but not a victory. Years of struggle still lay ahead.

Audubon, born in 1785 on the island of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), was the illegitmate son of a white chambermaid, Jeanne Rabin — who died not long after her son’s birth — and a French naval officer, Jean Audubon. During the bloody slave revolt of 1788, Audubon removed his toddler son to Nantes, France, and the home of his legal wife, Anne Moynet, a generous-hearted woman 14 years her husband’s senior.

When Napoleon’s conscription threatened to swallow young Jean Rabin at 18, his resourceful father smuggled him to America under the forged name, Jean Jacques Audubon. Living on a farm owned by his father on the outskirts of Philadelphia, the dashing young emigre married Lucy Bakewell.

Although misfortune plagued their life together, Audubon’s circle of magic remained unbroken. Ultimately, he was hailed as an ornithological genius and lived out his days on his New York farm until his death in 1851.

Shirley Streshinsky has wielded a powerful pen in this masterful evocation of America’s premier naturalist.

Bea Goodrich’s reviews are a monthly Books in Review feature. She also writes a review column and is the author of the award-winning nature series, “Happy Hollow Stories by Judge Tortoise.”