We are very fortunate to have, now on exhibit in Corning’s Rockwell Museum, the work of one of the most significant artists ever to work in America.
*John James Audubon spent decades tramping, riding, or boating across the United States, determined to document his adopted country’s native birds in paint. He hunted with Daniel Boone, and lived among the Indians. He probably knew America better than any man had before… and we can wonder whether anyone has known it so well since.
*Although greeted with considerable skepticism, “Birds of America” was quickly recognized as a staggering achievement in art and in nature study (and in printing techniques, too).
*Audubon then launched upon “Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America” – in other words, mammals. It’s from this work that our exhibit comes, in the form of highest quality hand-colored lithographic plates.
*Look at the Canada Otter… look, and keep looking. Look deeper, and deeper again. Notice how much of the fur is painted in as individual hairs, perhaps with a single-bristle brush.
*Many of the names are unfamiliar to us… some have changed names, some have gone extinct, some have been reclassified. Audubon presents us with the black squirrel, which we now consider just an uncommon color morph of the gray squirrel.
*Likewise in his artistic menagerie we find the polar bear, black bear, grizzly bear, and cinnamon bear. We now see the cinnamon as a subspecies of our own black bear.
*Audubon sometime staged his scenes in unlikely or even impossible ways. Five Common Flying Squirrels burst from a single tree, at various stages of age and occupation (resting, coiling, “flying,” etc.). They look like a Tasha Tudor picture.
*The Long-Haired Squirrel skips up and down a maple tree, as we can see from the leaves. The soft-haired squirrel makes its home in an oak.
*Audubon died before the project was finished; one son finished up the figures, while another finished the backgrounds. I don’t know who made the artistic decision, but the “Birds” and the “Quadrupeds” seem to have a telling difference.
*In the bird paintings, as far as I know, all of the backgrounds are natural settings. But the quadrupeds book shows a background filled with fences, farms, and towns. In some cases, the human presence intrudes still farther. The Tawny Weasel seizes a chicken in the yard of a large, well-kept barn. The Red Fox and the Canada Otter each snarl at the viewer, one paw caught in a trap. The Black-Tailed Deer staggers away, streaming blood, after being shot by a hunter at port arms in the background. Anerica had changed dramatically… more than dramatically… in Audubon’s adult lifetime.
*The book was originally issued in two oversize editions, one of them huge, and three subjects are on oversize sheets, pushing a yard in width. The Canada Otter, the Little American Brown Weasel, and the Caribou, or American Rein Deer are here in that detailed glory.
*The exhibit runs through January 6, and you may never get a chance to see another such gathering. Also of interest right now: the invitational gingerbread house competition, and “Your Place, Your Space,” an exhibition from Mrs. Marla Goldwyn’s 8th-grade digital art class at Corning-Painted Post Middle School. Take them in, and enjoy the permanent galleries. But don’t miss Audubon.