Researchers have found the first published illustration by John James Audubon, America’s most famous bird artist, ending decades of searching for the prized but elusive work.
Audubon had made two references to the illustration in his diaries, but it had never been seen until it was found on a sheet of sample images produced in 1824 by a New Jersey engraver who specialized in illustrations
for banknotes.
Eric Newman, a numismatic, or currency, historian working with Robert Peck, a senior fellow with Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences who had spent the last decade looking for the long-lost illustration, discovered it.
“It’s the holy grail of Audubon scholarship,” said Peck. “It’s significant because it was at a significant turning point in his life.”
Some researchers doubted its existence and even suggested that Audubon lied when he wrote about it to enhance his reputation before the publication of his masterwork Birds of America, starting in 1827.
Although it is unsigned, the image is clearly Audubon’s work because its detail — the bird is shown running through its grassy habitat — is characteristic of the artist’s ornithological expertise, according to experts.
“This is vintage, quintessential Audubon,” said Roberta Olson, curator of drawings at the New York Historical Society, which houses all 435 original watercolors for Birds
of America.
The discovery, announced by the Academy last week, will be published in the Journal of the Early Republic, an historical periodical, this fall.
The choice of subject suggests Audubon had little concept of what bankers might want on their notes, and helps to explain why the illustration had eluded scholars for so long.
“A skittish, shy, running grouse doesn’t instill great confidence in the bank,” Peck said.
Bankers in the early 19th century were more inclined to opt for images of eagles, or past presidents, to convey strength and stability to their customers, and so showed little interest in the grouse.
If the illustration of the now-extinct Heath Hen found its way on to banknotes in any quantity, it would have been at the New Jersey State Bank, for which the engraver, Gideon Fairman, produced the samples.
The bank’s Trenton branch failed in 1825 and its only other branch, in Camden, later destroyed all small-denomination bills in an effort to stop counterfeiting.
But Fairman, seeking business from the thousands of different bills in US circulation during the first half of the 19th century, also produced the image for a bank in Norwalk, Ohio, which put it on a sample US$3 bill, and for a bank in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which used the grouse on a US$5 bill, also just a sample, Peck said.
Two of the Bridgeport notes, and one from the Ohio bank, are now known to exist. All are owned by Newman, who is planning to put them on public display at a numismatic museum in St Louis later this year. The sample sheets and notes will also be exhibited at Princeton University in 2011.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and