John James Audubon

John James Audubon

Author: Richard Rhodes

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2006-04-11

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 037571393X

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John James Audubon came to America as a dapper eighteen-year-old eager to make his fortune. He had a talent for drawing and an interest in birds, and he would spend the next thirty-five years traveling to the remotest regions of his new country–often alone and on foot–to render his avian subjects on paper. The works of art he created gave the world its idea of America. They gave America its idea of itself. Here Richard Rhodes vividly depicts Audubon’s life and career: his epic wanderings; his quest to portray birds in a lifelike way; his long, anguished separations from his adored wife; his ambivalent witness to the vanishing of the wilderness. John James Audubon: The Making of an American is a magnificent achievement.


The Missouri River Journals of John James Audubon

The Missouri River Journals of John James Audubon

Author: John James Audubon

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2016-05-01

Total Pages: 507

ISBN-13: 0803244983

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"The first accurate transcription of John James Audubon's 1843 journals, which includes recently discovered and previously unpublished journal entries detailing his last expedition along the upper Missouri River"--Provided by publisher.


In the Footsteps of Audubon

In the Footsteps of Audubon

Author: Denis Clavreul

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-11-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0691241554

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An artist’s uniquely personal journey across America In the nineteenth century, ornithologist and painter John James Audubon set out to create a complete pictorial record of North American birdlife, traveling from Louisiana and the Florida Keys to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the cliffs of the Yellowstone River. The resulting work, The Birds of America, stands as a monumental achievement in American art. Over a period of sixteen years, recording his own journey in journals and hundreds of original paintings, renowned French watercolorist Denis Clavreul followed in the naturalist’s footsteps. In the Footsteps of Audubon brings together some 250 of Clavreul’s stunning watercolors along with illuminating selections from Audubon’s journals and several of his paintings. With pencil and brush in hand, Clavreul turns his naturalist’s eye and painterly skill to the landscapes that Audubon encountered on his travels, and to the animals and plants that Audubon depicted in his art. A passionate ornithologist, Clavreul sketches birds in the wild with rare dexterity, bringing them vividly to life on the page. He documents his encounters along the way with people who live with nature, many of whom are passionately engaged in preserving it, drawing on his insights as both a biologist and an artist to connect the past, present, and future. A spellbinding, richly evocative journey, In the Footsteps of Audubon is an invitation to see the natural world as Audubon saw it—and to see with new eyes what it has become today.


A Summer of Birds

A Summer of Birds

Author: Danny Heitman

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2020-02-05

Total Pages: 135

ISBN-13: 080717369X

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Over the summer of 1821, a cash-strapped John James Audubon worked as a tutor at Oakley Plantation in Louisiana’s rural West Feliciana Parish. This move initiated a profound change in direction for the struggling artist. Oakley’s woods teemed with life, galvanizing Audubon to undertake one of the most extraordinary endeavors in the annals of art: a comprehensive pictorial record of America’s birds. That summer, Audubon began what would eventually become his four-volume opus, Birds of America. In A Summer of Birds, Danny Heitman recounts the season that shaped Audubon’s destiny, sorting facts from romance to give an intimate view of the world’s most famous bird artist. A new preface marks the two-hundredth anniversary of that eventful interlude, reflecting on Audubon’s enduring legacy among artists, aesthetes, and nature lovers in Louisiana and around the world.


The Future of the Southern Plains

The Future of the Southern Plains

Author: Sherry L. Smith

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2005-08-01

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780806137353

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In The Future of the Southern Plains, scholars bring the region to the forefront by asking important questions about its past and suggesting prospects for its future. The contributors, some of them natives of the region, bring to their work a blend of scholarship and personal experience. They match intellectual sophistication with deep affection for a place defined primarily as western Texas, Oklahoma, and eastern New Mexico. Within this volume is a story about America, a story about limits, and a story about challenging those limits. Seven historians, one geographer, and a paleoclimatologist contribute a wealth of observation, analysis, and commentary on the environmental characteristics and history of the Southern Plains. They address such themes as failing communities, scarce water, endangered species, and disappearing ways of life—and the possible results of these developments not only in the Southern Plains but elsewhere on the globe. Based on presentations at a symposium sponsored by the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University, these essays treat the most important aspects of life on the Southern Plains today, from climate, politics, and religion to business and environmental renewal. Contributors and topics include: Sherry L. Smith: Introduction Dan Flores: Environmental destruction and preservation John Miller Morris: Corporations and family farms Diana Davids Olien: Oil production John Opie: Water management Jeff Roche: Political history Yolanda Romero: Political history Elliott West: Exploration Connie Woodhouse: Droughts


Western Art, Western History

Western Art, Western History

Author: Ron Tyler

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2019-03-07

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0806164425

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For nearly half a century, celebrated historian Ron Tyler has researched, interpreted, and exhibited western American art. This splendid volume, gleaned from Tyler’s extensive career of connoisseurship, brings together eight of the author’s most notable essays, reworked especially for this volume. Beautifully illustrated with more than 150 images, Western Art, Western History tells the stories of key artists, both famous and obscure, whose provocative pictures document the people and places of the nineteenth-century American West. The artists depicted in these pages represent a variety of personalities and artistic styles. According to Tyler, each of them responded in unique ways to the compelling and exotic drama that unfolded in the West during the nineteenth century—an age of exploration, surveying, pleasure travel, and scientific discovery. In eloquent and engaging prose, Tyler unveils a fascinating cast of characters, including the little-known German-Russian artist Louis Choris, who served as a draftsman on the second Russian circumnavigation of the globe; the exacting and precise Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, who accompanied Prince Maximilian of Wied on his sojourn up the Missouri River; and the young American Alfred Jacob Miller, whose seemingly frivolous and romantic depictions of western mountain men and American Indians remained largely unknown until the mid-twentieth century. Other artists showcased in this volume are John James Audubon, George Caleb Bingham, Alfred E. Mathews, and, finally, Frederic Remington, who famously sought to capture the last glimmers of the “old frontier.” A common thread throughout Western Art, Western History is the important role that technology—especially the development of lithography—played in the dissemination of images. As the author emphasizes, many works by western artists are valuable not only as illustrations but as scientific documents, imbued with cultural meaning. By placing works of western art within these broader contexts, Tyler enhances our understanding of their history and significance.