November 18, 2020
Winging It: America's Earliest Avian Artists
Laura Berlik
Docent at the Princeton University Art Museum, Birder, Art Teacher, Art Therapist, Painter
Rob Fraser, Introducer, and Laura Berlik
Minutes of the 11th Meeting of the 79th Year
President Stephen Schreiber called the meeting to order at 10:17 AM. Larry Hans read the minutes of the previous week. Dermot Gately introduced his guest, Betsy Garber. Other guests were Grace Mele, Marianne Grey, and Dee Gozonsky, all docents from the Princeton University Art Museum. The attendance was 133.
Rob Fraser introduced the speaker, Laura Berlik, an avid birder and docent at the Princeton University Art Museum, who spoke on the life and work of the two most prominent 18th and 19th century observers and illustrators of American birds, Mark Catesby and John James Audubon.
Ms. Berlik began her talk by describing both men as artists, naturalists, and pioneers in scientific illustrations, committed to documenting the birds of America. They differed in that Catesby’s illustrations of birds foreshadowed today’s field guides, while Audubon’s book can be considered the granddaddy of all coffee table books. Catesby’s work was destined to become the most important investigative work into America’s bird life early in the 18th century. It would take the talents of Audubon to eventually overshadow him about 100 years later.
Mark Catesby was born in 1683 to a well-to-do family in England. In 1712, when nearly 30 years old, he decided to travel to America where he stayed for seven years with his sister in Virginia before returning to his native country. In Virginia, he became an outstanding observer of nature, explored the entire length of the James River, recorded and sketched the plants and animals he encountered, and collected specimens and seeds. He had never studied artmaking but was driven in his drawings by what he visually observed. In the process, he became a self-taught artist.
Back in England, Catesby was able to cultivate a group of sponsors in what he had observed and brought back from his voyage. He obtained funding for another trip to America and returned to the Carolinas in 1722. During his second stay, Catesby regularly sent specimens, seeds, and drawings to his sponsors in England. The growing popularity of these watercolors, in which he uniquely depicted birds and other animals in active poses in their natural habitat, made Catesby realize that he needed to publish these illustrations together with his observations.
Between 1731 and 1743, Catesby published 180 copies of a multiple-volume book. In the process, he taught himself the etching technique and produced most of the plates for his book himself. Each folio-size copy included 263 illustrations printed in black and white and then hand-colored for more than 47,000 individual prints. Each illustration was accompanied by his observations of the birds and the plants on a separate page.
The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands made Mark Catesby an 18th century celebrity. The book was purchased by royalty and scientists all over Europe. Linnaeus, who never went to America, relied entirely on Catesby’s illustrations for the American section of his revolutionary binomial nomenclature of species. As a scientific reference it remained unsurpassed until Audubon, with his Birds of America, eclipsed it a century later.
In nearly every way, John James Audubon was a more colorful individual than the loner Mark Catesby. Born in 1785 on a sugar plantation in Haiti, Audubon moved with his father to France in 1791. In France, he benefited from a gentleman’s education, also learning to paint. However, he was more interested in hunting, fishing, and collecting natural specimens than schooling. After turning 18 he was sent off to America where he headed to Pennsylvania, to a farm owned by his father. Managing the farm was not a success, and the farm eventually went bankrupt in 1819.
Financially supported by his wife Lucie, Audubon then decided to find every species of bird in North America. He traveled the East Coast from Labrador to the Florida Keys, and westward to the Great Plains, but never personally made it to the Rockies or further to the West Coast to finish his work. However, he did succeed in painting nearly 500 of the 650 identified bird species of North America.
Audubon studied his subjects in the wild and became an authority on their postures, habits, and appearance. Also being a skilled taxidermist, he manipulated dead birds with wires and pins. Building on the style of Catesby, Audubon made their poses even more active and the settings even more natural than his predecessor, before he transformed the animated scene into watercolor paintings and prints for his book.
Birds of America is an elephant-size, eight-volume book with a collection of 435 hand-colored plates of life-size birds. Besides the animated style and size of the prints, a dose of artistic license may have contributed to their success. Audubon’s red birds are redder and his blue birds bluer. Even in some birds that are not overall yellow, his yellows are yellower. Each plate is accompanied by a long, chatty essay in a companion book, Ornithological Biography. His informal manner of writing, full of colorful observations, was intended to appeal to the public much more than Catesby’s old-fashioned, stick-to-the-point style.
Catesby was the pioneer in scientific illustration, and he was interested in documenting all sorts of American wildlife. His art is not great art, just reliable information. He was the first to illustrate birds in their natural settings, first to print birds in color, first to recognize migration and man’s impact on the environment. A century later, Audubon forged a synthesis between a scientific and an aesthetically enhanced version of the truth that resulted in the most beautifully illustrated book on birds of America ever published.
Respectfully submitted,
Welmoet Bok van Kammen
Rob Fraser introduced the speaker, Laura Berlik, an avid birder and docent at the Princeton University Art Museum, who spoke on the life and work of the two most prominent 18th and 19th century observers and illustrators of American birds, Mark Catesby and John James Audubon.
Ms. Berlik began her talk by describing both men as artists, naturalists, and pioneers in scientific illustrations, committed to documenting the birds of America. They differed in that Catesby’s illustrations of birds foreshadowed today’s field guides, while Audubon’s book can be considered the granddaddy of all coffee table books. Catesby’s work was destined to become the most important investigative work into America’s bird life early in the 18th century. It would take the talents of Audubon to eventually overshadow him about 100 years later.
Mark Catesby was born in 1683 to a well-to-do family in England. In 1712, when nearly 30 years old, he decided to travel to America where he stayed for seven years with his sister in Virginia before returning to his native country. In Virginia, he became an outstanding observer of nature, explored the entire length of the James River, recorded and sketched the plants and animals he encountered, and collected specimens and seeds. He had never studied artmaking but was driven in his drawings by what he visually observed. In the process, he became a self-taught artist.
Back in England, Catesby was able to cultivate a group of sponsors in what he had observed and brought back from his voyage. He obtained funding for another trip to America and returned to the Carolinas in 1722. During his second stay, Catesby regularly sent specimens, seeds, and drawings to his sponsors in England. The growing popularity of these watercolors, in which he uniquely depicted birds and other animals in active poses in their natural habitat, made Catesby realize that he needed to publish these illustrations together with his observations.
Between 1731 and 1743, Catesby published 180 copies of a multiple-volume book. In the process, he taught himself the etching technique and produced most of the plates for his book himself. Each folio-size copy included 263 illustrations printed in black and white and then hand-colored for more than 47,000 individual prints. Each illustration was accompanied by his observations of the birds and the plants on a separate page.
The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands made Mark Catesby an 18th century celebrity. The book was purchased by royalty and scientists all over Europe. Linnaeus, who never went to America, relied entirely on Catesby’s illustrations for the American section of his revolutionary binomial nomenclature of species. As a scientific reference it remained unsurpassed until Audubon, with his Birds of America, eclipsed it a century later.
In nearly every way, John James Audubon was a more colorful individual than the loner Mark Catesby. Born in 1785 on a sugar plantation in Haiti, Audubon moved with his father to France in 1791. In France, he benefited from a gentleman’s education, also learning to paint. However, he was more interested in hunting, fishing, and collecting natural specimens than schooling. After turning 18 he was sent off to America where he headed to Pennsylvania, to a farm owned by his father. Managing the farm was not a success, and the farm eventually went bankrupt in 1819.
Financially supported by his wife Lucie, Audubon then decided to find every species of bird in North America. He traveled the East Coast from Labrador to the Florida Keys, and westward to the Great Plains, but never personally made it to the Rockies or further to the West Coast to finish his work. However, he did succeed in painting nearly 500 of the 650 identified bird species of North America.
Audubon studied his subjects in the wild and became an authority on their postures, habits, and appearance. Also being a skilled taxidermist, he manipulated dead birds with wires and pins. Building on the style of Catesby, Audubon made their poses even more active and the settings even more natural than his predecessor, before he transformed the animated scene into watercolor paintings and prints for his book.
Birds of America is an elephant-size, eight-volume book with a collection of 435 hand-colored plates of life-size birds. Besides the animated style and size of the prints, a dose of artistic license may have contributed to their success. Audubon’s red birds are redder and his blue birds bluer. Even in some birds that are not overall yellow, his yellows are yellower. Each plate is accompanied by a long, chatty essay in a companion book, Ornithological Biography. His informal manner of writing, full of colorful observations, was intended to appeal to the public much more than Catesby’s old-fashioned, stick-to-the-point style.
Catesby was the pioneer in scientific illustration, and he was interested in documenting all sorts of American wildlife. His art is not great art, just reliable information. He was the first to illustrate birds in their natural settings, first to print birds in color, first to recognize migration and man’s impact on the environment. A century later, Audubon forged a synthesis between a scientific and an aesthetically enhanced version of the truth that resulted in the most beautifully illustrated book on birds of America ever published.
Respectfully submitted,
Welmoet Bok van Kammen