Emma Hickman
Encounters with Nature
11/5/11
Audubon Assignment
In John James Audobon’s Birds of America there are over 400 plates of several bird
species in their respective habitats. Each plate contains such an extreme level of detail, however,
based off of my observation of plate eighty-two, there are strange elements that appear in the
drawings. The birds are not exactly portrayed naturally; they have almost an idealistic and
cartoonish quality about them. Additionally, the specimens do not appear three-dimensional;
they appear strangely static, as if they were dead when they were drawn which is indeed how
Audubon observed several of his specimens. Audubon’s work reveals the problem that arises
when people attempt to harness nature through possession and destruction, they lose sight of why
they valued it in the first place, often for the very qualities that are destroyed once it is possessed
by humans, its beauty and wildness.
In the plate that we are studying, plate 82, there are three whip-poor-wills, two butterflies
and one caterpillar. All of these specimens are arranged in a harmonious manner, however, if you
look closely, the bird in the top portion of the painting appears to be eyeing the butterfly next to
it in a threatening manner. This relationship leads the eye to view the picture in a circular manner
from the first bird to the butterfly, continuing to the second butterfly and then the bird at the
bottom, to the bird next to it and then to the caterpillar. This illusion of a living food chain is
ironic because of the fact that Audubon used dead specimens as models for the animals. Despite
Audubon’s effort to faithfully represent nature, the sketch remains very still, and no illusion of
motion is portrayed. This emphasizes what was lost when the specimens were killed for
observation; their natural predator/prey behavior was destroyed along with their freedom and
vivacity.
The main focal point of the sketch is the whip-poor-will in the upper half of the page. It
dominates mainly with its large size, dark color and threatening attitude. Upon first glance, the
bird seems to be portrayed quite realistically, however the texture of the feathers is off, as is the
glassy look in the bird’s eyes. The one thing that is severely lacking in this portrayal of the bird
is its three dimensionality. This most probably stems from the state of the specimen that
Audubon used as a guide when sketching the image. As aforementioned, the vivid energetic
quality of the bird is lost. This has several consequences one of which is that the bird is not
accurately portrayed. Even though the drawing is quite detailed, elements of the animal’s death
seeps into the drawing inadvertently in the way that the extended wings appear stiff and the eyes
appear glassy and unmoving. These observations create problems because they separate the
drawing from the animal that a person might find in the wilderness. If the point of Audubon’s
collection of illustrations is to create an encyclopedia of scientifically accurate portrayals of bird
species, then he has failed because the elements of death greatly affect a specimen, making a
natural living thing appear unnatural and defeated. These problems are in addition to the already
prevalent issues that several people had with regard to the difficult to be completely accurate in
scientific drawings. It is quite impossible to portray a specimen exactly as it appears in nature
and adding another inaccurate element such as the dead state of the specimen results in an even
more inaccurate drawing. To the naturalist Cessi, even scientific drawings from living natural
specimens were too misleading and embellished, words were more applicable when describing
natural samples.1
1
Freedberg, David. The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, his friends, and the beginnings of modern
natural history, University of Chicago Press, 2002, page 6.
2
The balance and symmetry of the engraving is an important facet of the affect that the
image has as a whole. While not exactly symmetrical, there is a balance present in the numbers
of specimens in the picture. There are three whip-poor-wills, two butterflies and one caterpillar
and three main sections that branch off of the main stem in the center of the picture. This balance
of items in the image is unnatural because it is rare to see so many of the same animal species in
such a small area. As a result, I think that the specimens were most likely arranged in their
present position according to the artist’s discretion. This action emphasizes the loss of the natural
quality of the sketch as a result of the artist’s aggressive manipulation of nature without regard to
how his domination of the specimens would affect their natural quality, the quality that he
wished to capture in the first place. As a result, the natural elements of the drawing were
disturbed, not only in the details present or not present in the depictions of the specific animals,
but also in the unnatural arrangement of the specimens on the page, in their supposed natural
environment behaving in a way thought to be similar to their natural behavior.
This illustrations stands out to me as quite different than the other illustrations that we
have looked at in class. The reason is mainly because the illustration does not appear to be as
naturalistic as most of the others. In those, the artists were extremely occupied with ensuring the
precise nature of every single aspect of the drawing. Naturalists went to great lengths in order to
ensure that their draughtsmen created images that were as accurate and realistic as possible
including making them copy conventional images of specimens that they wanted them to sketch.2
2
Nickelsen, Karin. “Draughtsmen, Botanists and Nature: Constructing Eighteenth-Century
Botanical Illustrations.” Studies in History and Philosphy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
37 (2006): 10.
3
The draughtsmen had to make sure that they created images that were recognizable by anyone
familiar with the other scientific drawings of the day. The Audubon plate does not follow these
conventions; the image is more artistic than scientific. This statement is supported by the effect
that the colors have on the image. The colors are very bright and dramatic, seeming garish and
unrealistic. The fact that each image was hand colored by artists who had not been present when
the image itself was drawn from the specimens is also an important reason why the image is not
as scientifically accurate as those that Nickelsen discussed in her article.
John James Audubon’s engraving demonstrates the problems that occur when people
attempt to harness nature through possession and destruction without considering the reasons
why they were so drawn to the nature in the first place and without considering that several of
those qualities are destroyed once nature is tampered with by humans. The plate brings to the
viewer’s attention the unnatural method that Audubon used to observe animals, viewing and
sketching them when they were dead and stuffed. The fact that Audubon’s desire to observe and
draw the natural specimens resulted in their death, completely conflicts with the usual desires
and thoughts of a naturalist. This conflicting situation resulted in an artistic yet inaccurate sketch
of the specimens. It is important to consider the effects that humans can have on nature
inadvertently, even when trying to value it by studying and researching it.
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