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THBJohn James Audubon (1785-1851) The Birds of America & Quadrupeds of North America
About Seller
65 Sharp Street
Hingham, MA 02043
United States
Copley Fine Art Auctions is the world's leading American sporting art auction company. Located in Hingham, MA, Copley specializes in antique decoys and 19th- and 20th-century American, sporting, and wildlife paintings. Principal Stephen O'Brien Jr., a fourth-generation sportsman with a refined colle...Read more
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About Auction
LiveFeb 15, 2020
Charleston Marriott, 170 Lockwood Blvd., Charleston, SC 29403 Copley Fine Art Auctions cinnie@copleyart.com
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- Lot Description
John James Audubon (1785-1851)
"The Birds of America," New York: V.G. Audubon, 1856. Second octavo edition, in seven volumes, illustrated throughout with 500 hand-colored lithographs after Audubon's drawings.
John James Audubon (1785-1851) and Rev. John Bachman
"The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America," New York: V.G. Audubon, 1856. Octavo edition, in three volumes, illustrated throughout with 155 full-page color lithographs after Audubon's drawings.
The octavo version of Audubon’s "Birds of America," with its second edition published in 1856, cemented the artist/naturalist’s status and made his masterwork more widely available. While the double-elephant folios went to subscribers with aristocratic pedigrees or soaring fortunes, the octavo editions opened up a broader market for the great ornithological artist’s work. Published with his sons, Victor Gifford and John Woodhouse, it incorporated tinted backgrounds and was printed and colored by J. T. Bowen in Philadelphia. In a scientific sense, the octavo edition improved on the earlier folio prints, with more species included and ordered in a more scientific manner.
This copy, in its original publisher’s bindings, was previously owned by Charles Evans, a prominent chemist, businessman, and Quaker in the Philadelphia area, who inscribed the front endpapers in 1904. Evans lived in Riverton and Cinnaminson, New Jersey, with his wife, Anna Stokes Wood, whom he married in 1899 at the Westfield Meeting. He came to lead the chemical manufacturing firm Carter & Scattergood, and after World War I directed relief efforts in France for the American Red Cross, and in Mexico after a major 1920 earthquake.
Evans was a member of the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, and in 1916 he reported a rare sighting of two evening grosbeaks, feeding in his yard, that was published in The Auk, the journal of the American Ornithological Society. It states, “He recognized them at once by a colored plate of the species which he had, but supplemented this identification with a direct comparison with the description in Chapman’s ‘Handbook.’ The birds were exceedingly tame and would scarcely get out of his way."
Paired with "The Quadrupeds of North America" and bound in the original publisher’s brown morocco leather, this set of ten volumes is a feat of artistry, scientific observation, and a landmark of American scientific publishing. The Audubon family worked closely together to produce the set, and the lithograph stones were destroyed in a Philadelphia warehouse fire after 1870.
Provenance: Collection of Charles Evans, 1904
Private Collection, Pennsylvania
Literature: George Spencer Morris, “The Evening Grosbeak,” The Auk, vol. XXXIV, 1917, p. 93.Please email condition report requests to leah@copleyart.com. Any condition statement given is a courtesy to customers, Copley will not be held responsible for any errors or omissions. The absence of a condition statement does not imply that the lot is in perfect condition.Condition
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