Birthplace: Les Cayes, Santo Domingo, Haiti
Died: 27-Jan-1851
Location of death: Minnie's Land (Audubon Park), New York City
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, Trinity Cemetery, Manhattan, NY
Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: Multiracial
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Naturalist, Artist
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Illustrated Birds of America
The American naturalist John James Audubon was born on 26th April 1785 in Haiti, his father being a French naval officer and his mother a Spanish creole. He was educated in Paris, where he had lessons from the painter, J. L. David. Returning to America in 1798 he settled on a farm near Philadelphia, and gave himself up to the study of natural history, and especially to drawing birds. In 1826 he went to England in the hope of getting his drawings published, and by the following year he had obtained sufficient subscribers to enable him to begin the publication of his Birds of America, which on its completion in 1838 consisted of 435 colored plates, containing 1055 figures of birds the size of life.Georges Cuvier called it "le plus magnifique monument que l'art ait encore elevée a la nature." The descriptive matter to accompany the plates appeared at Edinburgh in 5 volumes from 1831 to 1839 under the title ofAmerican Ornithological Biography. During the publication of these works Audubon divided his time between Great Britain and America, devoting his leisure to expeditions to various parts of the United States and Canada for the purpose collecting new material. In 1842 he bought an estate on the Hudson, now Audubon Park in New York City. In 1844 he published in America a popular octavo edition of his Birds of America. He also took up the preparation of a new work, The Quadrupeds of America, with the collaboration of John Bachman, the publication of which was begun in New York in 1846 and finished in 1853-4. He died at New York on the 27th of January 1851.
Father: Jean Audubon (French sea merchant)
Mother: Jeanne Rabin (Creole mistress)
Wife: Lucy Bakewell (m. 1808, d. 19-Jun-1874)
Son: Victor Gifford Audubon (b. 6-Jun-1809)
Son: John Woodhouse Audubon (d. 21-Feb-1862)
Kentucky Colonel
Bankruptcy jailed (1819)
French Ancestry Paternal
Spanish Ancestry Maternal
Creole Ancestry Maternal
Is the subject of books:
Audubon and His Journals, 1897, BY: Maria R. Audubon
John James Audubon, 1964, BY: Alice Ford
Author of books:
Birds of America (1838, nonfiction)
American Ornithological Biography (1831-9, nonfiction, 5 vols.)
The Quadrupeds of America (1853-4, nonfiction, with John Bachman)
Appears on postage stamps:
USA, Scott #1863 (22 cents, issued 23-Apr-1985)
USA, Scott #3650 (37 cents, depicting birds, issued 27-Jun-2002)
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