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Review: Audubon: Early drawings

Artist John James Audubon is famous for his magnificent Birds of America, but his early drawings had a charm that is missing from his masterworks
Review: Audubon: Early drawings
(Image: Belknap/Harvard University Press)

IN 1803, a young Frenchman called Jean-Jacques Audubon sailed to America to avoid conscription into Napoleon鈥檚 army. Thirty-five years later, he was the revered ornithological artist , 鈥渢he American woodsman鈥, author of the magnificent . Before that book made him famous, he had spent decades trying to find a way to make his birds appear to fly off the page. This collection of 116 early drawings, published together for the first time, shows that while his early birds didn鈥檛 quite take off, they did have a delicacy and charm that somehow went missing from his later masterworks.

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Richard Rhodes, Scott Edwards and Leslie Morris

Belknap/Harvard University Press

Topics: Books / Books and art / Festive science

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