John James Audubon (1785-1851) lived a tumultuous life riddled with scandal and poverty but his prodigious effort to depict all of America’s birds at life size is today still widely heralded as the standard of wildlife illustration. The monumental Birds of America contains 435 plates depicting 1065 figures of 489 species of American birds, in life size, reproduced from Audubon’s paintings.
Audubon drew largely from specimens gathered in the field or from skins sent to him by naturalists to create his representations. To reproduce his paintings, the images were copied by means of etching on copper plates (often with additional aquatinting and, less frequently, with occasional engraving) and printed in black ink on “double elephant folio” paper by Robert Havell of London (except for plates I-X, which were editioned by W. H. Lizars of Edinburgh). Subsequent to printing, the images were hand colored with watercolor before being distributed, either in installments to subscribers (in eighty-seven parts of five prints each) or as complete bound copies to the general public.
Purple Martin
Purple Martin, Plate XXII
The Purple Martin makes its appearance in the City of New Orleans from the 1st to the 9th of February, occasionally a few days earlier than the first of these dates, and is then to be seen gambolling through the air, over the city and the river, feeding on many sorts of insects, which are there found in abundance at that period.
Excerpt from Audubon's Ornithological Biography. Edinburgh, 1834-1839.