Audubon - Quadrupeds of North America

Antique Natural History Prints, Mammals, Fishes, Sealife / Audubon - Quadrupeds of North America

Quadrupeds of North America
John J. Audubon, Rev. John Bachman, John Woodhouse Audubon, Victor Audubon

Published New York, First Octavo Publication 1849 to 1854

Hand Colored Stone Lithograph

Size: 6.75” x 10”

John James Audubon’s (1785-1851) detailed paintings capture the beauty of the four-footed creatures that populated the North American forest and plains of the time. In the 1830s, Audubon began to gather material for his Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, meant to complete his record of the animal life of North America. Having achieved worldwide fame with his "Birds of North America", he joined with his sons, John and Victor, and Rev. John Bachman a naturalist and Lutheran minister to draw and describe America's quadrupeds. With his sons, Audubon collected and drew specimens in the Eastern woodlands, Missouri, and the Rocky Mountains, as well as in coastal regions of Florida and the East Cast. Although Audubon's health and eyesight began to fail, he managed to complete 77 drawings before illness kept him from his work. By the time of his death in 1851, Audubon’s sons had managed to solicit three hundred subscriptions for the Imperial Folio Quadrupeds.

The entire work comprised 150 prints, 22” x 24” in the imperial folio size; each lithographed and hand-colored with such precision and care as to give the fur on the animals a superbly realistic appearance. As the first work on American quadrupeds of this scope and quality, Audubon's second great work is a landmark of American natural science. Overshadowed by the Birds of America, and unjustly unknown, the prints from Audubon's Quadrupeds of North America are considered by some to be even finer and more accurate than the bird prints; they surely are prints of the highest quality and beauty.

The Octavo edition of quadrupeds, Quadrupeds of North America were published in the smaller form just as the birds, but for the first time, the name of Audubon's son, John W., appeared on many of the plates. J. T. Bowen was the lithographer, but about 17 of the plates in volume one were lithographed by Nagel and Weingaertner of New York. A number of artists, chiefly William E. Hitchcock and R. Trembly, transferred the images to the stones, signing their initials on the plates. About 2,000 copies of all four editions were sold. The First Edition was 1849-54 and the last 1870. These three-volume sets, as with the seven volumes of birds, were used as gifts to foreign governments by the U. S. government. The plates measure about 7 x 10 inches and are stone lithographs colored by hand.