Press Room --
 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 9, 2014, Springfield, IL
A selection of the Illinois State Museum's John James Audubon print collection will be showcased in a new exhibition in the Museum's temporary|PERMANENTgallery on the second floor. In homage to the 100th anniversary of last passenger pigeon, Jim Zimmer, Director of Art and History, has chosen prints which reflect bird species that have become nationally extinct or endangered since Audubon first captured their life-size images almost two centuries ago or whose presence have more recently been compromised in Illinois.
John James Audubon (1785—1851) arrived in America from France in 1803. From an early age, Audubon displayed a great interest in observing and drawing birds. He lived in a time of great curiosity about natural history, especially in the study of birds, or ornithology. Untrained as a scientist, Audubon relied on his own artistic ingenuity and diligence as an observer to develop a unique, bold style of bird illustration. He was a naturalist, noting the habits and habitats of birds as if they were companions rather than objects of study.
His life-long work, The Birds of America, is considered a masterpiece of early American art. The 435 vibrant, life-size images of birds depicted in natural settings were a major departure from the stiff images found in contemporary natural-history illustration. Audubon’s aspiration to see his watercolors published as a print edition was ambitious; no other artist or naturalist at this time had attempted to reproduce illustrations on such a large scale, nor with such exacting detail.
The selected prints on view include two from the first edition of The Birds of America, etched and hand colored from Audubon’s original paintings by Robert Havell and Sons of London between 1827 and 1838. The remaining prints on view are fine examples of chromolithography printed by Julius Bien of New York between 1858 and 1860. Both of these editions were printed in double-elephant size, which allowed Audubon’s watercolors of life-sized birds to be printed at their original size.
The species featured in this exhibition were selected by Zimmer out of the ninety-seven prints contained in the Illinois State Museum Audubon Collection. All were generously donated to the Illinois State Museum in 1947 by the Estate of Judge R. Magoon Barnes (1862–1945).
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