One of the few night scenes depicted in The Birds of America, this life sized engraving was created in 1831 from John James Audubon's original 1829 drawing. The second picture shows Audubon's personally mounted Snowy Owl specimen. As some of my blog followers have noted in the comments, it is sad to think that Audubon killed so many birds in the process of creating these beautiful prints and paintings.
9 comments:
Snowy owls are beautiful, but their lives changed with the Harry Potter movies. Many children wanted one and they had to be protected for that here.
Beautiful paintings, specially the last one!
Léia
Perhaps the birds were already sickly...we can hope anyway. This is much better than the vultures, lol.
I've read that he killed an astounding number of birds while documenting them. Great pics.
Hi Lois, thank you for sharing these wonderful art works!
I was unaware of the killing and stuffing that went along with Audubon's painting. But, I suppose, it makes sense for that time period. How else would people have been educated about the extensive species of birds and their detailed beauty?
Very nice. Whatever else one can say, it is true that he was a gifted artist and thought he was doing the right thing.
We had a bad storm last night also...probably the same one the came through your area. It seems to have passed and the rains have stopped and the wind has died down. Lots of lightning! Ugh!
I suppose it was what people did in those days - they took birds' eggs too. It doesn't take away too much from the beauty of his paintings. I'm glad we live in more enlightened times but I wonder what future generations will castigate us for?
It is tough judging people in the past by today's standards. In his time, killing animals was pretty normal.
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