Audubon's Birds, Flightless, And Soaring

His birds may be American, but these prints aren't. They were made in London. Audubon supplied the detailed watercolor drawings on which his prints were based, but skillful English craftsmen, led by London's Robert Havell (1793-1878), etched their copper plates, and put them through the press, and applied their watercolor hues. Publication, which began in 1826, was completed in 1838.

Europe offered Audubon something else he sorely needed -- competitive buyers rich enough to afford his costly art.

"It is not the naturalist I wish to please," he wrote in 1826, "it is the wealthy part of the community."

In this he well succeeded. King George IV of England, King Charles X of France, the Duchess of Clarence and Charles Bonaparte, who one day would become King Louis Philippe of France, were among his subscribers. A full set of "The Birds" cost $1,000, and a rich man's private library grand enough to house it -- a library with leather chairs and 40-inch-high bookshelves and long well-ordered rows of rich morocco bindings -- cost even more than that.

Audubon knew just how to hook his wealthy customers. Once he got to England he became the Noble Savage, the artist as a natural, the diamond in the rough. He called himself "The American Woodsman." He claimed he'd hunted with Daniel Boone. He came on like Natty Bumppo from "The Last of the Mohicans." In London, Audubon strode into grand drawing rooms with fringes on his buckskins, and bear grease in his hair.

His pictures are displayed against bare walls at the National Gallery. The drawing rooms where Audubon showed them off were different. There the table legs and candlesticks were carved with smooth acanthus leaves. Underfoot were figured carpets. Everywhere one turned one saw curlicues and swirls and swooping arabesques. All beauty is dependent on the beauty of the S-curve, so England's William Hogarth had taught his nation's aestheticians. Audubon's compositions -- those glimpses of the New World designed to reassure the Old -- rely upon it, too.

Audubon, the artist, was a pretty good ecologist. His birds don't perch in bell jars. His pictures show the foods they eat (catfish, baby alligators, many sorts of moths) and the branches they inhabit, and glimpses of the landscapes through which he'd watched them fly.

To give the man due credit, he was a great graphic designer. His birds don't really move; they swoop or tumble. He never shows them blurred. Their energy derives from the power of their outlines, and from the unexpected ways they've been fit onto the page.

Otherwise they're static. Their floating feathers do not float, they look glued to the paper. Audubon's birds feel pinioned, too. Instead of lively flying things, they tend to look like corpses pinned to boards with nails, or held in place by metal wires -- which shouldn't be surprising for that's just what they are.

Audubon's Dream Realized: Selections From 'The Birds of America' will be on display in the National Gallery's West Building, Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue NW, through March 26. The 50 prints on view have been chosen from a folio that Mrs. Walter B. James presented to the gallery 60 years ago. An Audubon oil painting, "Osprey and Weakfish" (1829 or later), a recent gift of Richard Mellon Scaife, is also on display. General Dynamics sponsored this exhibit. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays. Admission is free. Go to http://www.nga.gov/ or call 202-737-4215 for more information.