American History – June 2019

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C

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ED

IT

Bird Man

John James Audubon

(1785–1851) was an Amer-

ican painter, naturalist,

and author. The Birds of

America, his focus 1827

to 1839, is an epic work of

435 prints of 497 species,

25 that he identified. The

images are accompanied

by his remarks on each.

Ornithologist John Kirk

Townsend, a member of

Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth’s

Rocky Mountain ex-

pedition to the Pacific

Ocean, collected many

of the specimens shown

in the volume. Audubon

financed the project’s

cost of $115,640—today,

$2 million-plus—with ad-

vance sales, commissions,

exhibits, and sales of skins

of animals he had hunted.

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8

26

STYLE

26 AMERICAN HISTORY