Book review - John James James Audubon: The Nature of the American Woodsman by Gregory Nobles

Reviewed by Steve Phenicie

If you’re looking for a biography about John James Audubon, the man for whom the Audubon network is named, you’ll have many choices. One of them is by our own Gregory Nobles, a Georgia Audubon member and Master Birder and a professor emeritus of history at Georgia Tech.

Nobles admires Audubon’s contributions to art and science, but the book does not back away from the man’s shortcomings and character flaws either. “He could be more than a little loose with the truth about his own life,” Nobles notes. One of his more intriguing fabrications is a tale about going hunting with Daniel Boone, which was entirely made up, although an elderly Boone once turned him down.

Our author tells us not to take all of Audubon’s stories literally, but we should take them seriously because it tells us what kind of a man Audubon was. Nobles says he tried to provide us with a different look at Audubon than the others, taking a more topical approach. Still, I think the book might have benefited by including a timeline of Audubon’s life, particularly for those of us who haven’t read any of the others. Here are some of the facts about the man:

• Born in what is now Haiti in 1785, the son of a French naval officer and his mistress; died in 1851 in New York City, where he is buried.
• Grew up in France and immigrated to the United States in 1803 when his father sought to keep him out of the Napoleonic wars.
• Lived on a farm owned by his father near Valley Forge, Pa., and met a neighbor, Lucy Bakewell, whom he married. They had two children who survived to adulthood, both sons.
• Operated businesses in Kentucky and Missouri, and also hunted and fished to feed his family. Painted signs and did portraits when he had to. When he could, he learned taxidermy, drew birds, and conducted scientific experiments. Was largely self-educated.
• Spent much of his time separated from his family as he pursued his passion of searching for birds while his wife taught school.
• In the 1820s started work on the endeavor for which he is best known, “The Birds of America,” a massive undertaking in which Audubon sought to produce a portrait of every bird in the country. He eventually came up with 435 works and spent much of the rest of his life displaying, promoting, and marketing his effort.
• Most noteworthy writing was “Ornithological Biography,” a 3,000-page companion piece to “The Birds of America” in which he described the birds in the paintings.

Audubon, who cultivated an image as an “American woodsman,” relied on his gun as the primary instrument of his ornithological research and artistic efforts. He would use wires to pose his dead specimens in life-like poses while he worked on his drawings. Killing birds makes those of us in the 21st century a bit squeamish, of course, even if we do realize that Audubon lived before photography or spotting scopes, so if you were going to get your hands on birds, you had to kill them. He didn’t seem to have any qualms about this, however, and also enjoyed hunting for sport.

Audubon had nothing to do with the founding of the National Audubon Society–it came along in 1905.

Greg Nobles obviously knows his subject because this book provides a great deal of insight into Audubon’s life and is certainly worth a read. And don’t forget: The author is a member of the Georgia Audubon “home team.”

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