John James Audubon

John James Audubon (April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was a French-American
ornithologist, naturalist, hunter, and painter.
He painted, catalogued, and described the birds of
North America in a manner far superior to what had gone
before.
Born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti)
and raised in France as a youth, in his embrace of America
 and his outsize personality and achievements,
he represented the new American people of the United States.

John James Audubon is best known for The Birds of America, a book of 435 images,
portraits of every bird then known in the United States – painted and reproduced in the size of life.
Its creation cost Audubon eighteen years of monumental effort in finding the birds, making the book,
and selling it to subscribers. Audubon also wrote thousands of pages about birds (Ornithological Biography);
he’d completed half of a collection of paintings of mammals (The Viviparous Quadrapeds of North America) when his eyesight
 failed in 1846.

Audubon made some excursions out West where he hoped to record Western species he had missed, but his health began to fail.
In 1848, he manifested signs of senility, his "noble mind in ruins."[59] He died at his family home on January 27, 1851.
Audubon is buried, close to the location of his home, in the graveyard at the Church of the Intercession in the Trinity
Church Cemetery and Mausoleum at 155th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. There is an imposing monument in his honor at the
cemetery, which is the center of the Heritage Rose District of NYC. [60]

Audubon's final work was on mammals, the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America,
prepared in collaboration with his good friend Rev. John Bachman of Charleston, South Carolina.
 Bachman supplied much of the scientific text. The work was completed by Audubon's sons and son-in-law
and published posthumously. His son John did most of the drawings.


here some drawings of  him