John James Audubon's Tastes of America

摘要

On October 15, 1820, three days into a three-month journey down the Mississippi River from Cincinnati to New Orleans, John James Audubon wrote in his journal that the hermit thrush he had just shot was "too much torn to make a drawing of it.. .this Was the first time I had Met with this bird and felt particularly Mortified at its Situation." The thirty-five-year-old Audubon was looking for specimens to draw. Obscure and poor, with little outwardly to recommend him, he had a plan that was beginning totake shape. This idea, truly an idee fixe, eventually became The Birds of America, published between 1827 and 1838 in four volumes with 435 life-size portraits of birds in hand-colored engravings. This great work astonishes us still for its boldness ofconception and scale of achievement, for its technical ingenuity, and for its sheer beauty.