Arts and Sciences

Roberta J Olsen | The Magazine Antiques | 8th July 2024

Famous in ornithology, Audubon should also be regarded as America’s first great watercolourist. Self-taught, he reputedly was immune from the influence of other artists. A comparison of his work against Rembrandt and (particularly) the French artist Oudry, suggests otherwise. Yet he went further, showing the drama of movement amidst “the fierce beauty of the natural world.” Says the author, Audubon was “a nineteenth-century American Leonardo da Vinci, who married art and science.”