CHAPTER XII

EARLY DRAWINGS IN FRANCE AND AMERICA

Child and man—His ideals, perseverance and progress—Study under David at Paris—David's pupils and studios—David at Nantes arouses the enthusiasm of its citizens—His part in the Revolution—His art and influence over Audubon—Audubon's drawings of French birds—Story of the Edward Harris collection—_The Birds of America_ in the bud—Audubon's originality, style, methods, and mastery of materials and technique—His problem and how he solved it—His artistic defects.

Audubon began to draw birds and other animals when a child, and, like most children, was ready to believe that his crude sketches were finished pictures if only they possessed some sort of a head, a tail, and sticks in place of legs. But, unlike the majority of youth, he went direct to nature for his subjects, and his "family of cripples" failed to satisfy him long. He gradually developed a high ideal, and at an early age felt stirring within him the impulse and the power to express it. On stated anniversaries his masterpieces, he tells us, were burned, in spite of the praise and flattery they had evoked; he would then exert all his powers to do better, and this commendable practice was kept up for years.

In this respect the child was father of the man, for on the 5th of March, 1822, when Audubon was living in New Orleans, too poor to buy even a blank-book for a journal, he thus wrote of his work during the previous months: "Every moment I had to spare I drew birds for my ornithology, in which my Lucy and myself alone have faith. February was spent in drawing birds strenuously, and I thought I had improved by applying coats of water-color under the pastels, thereby preventing the appearance of the paper, that in some instances marred my best productions. I discovered also many imperfections in my earlier drawings, and formed the resolution to redraw the whole of them." Seldom satisfied with the results attained, he kept up this laborious process of revision and selection by which he approached more closely to his ideal, the truth of living nature, for more than forty years, until, in fact, the last plates of his _Birds of America_ came from the press in England in 1838. An examination of the originals of those plates today[149] proves that many of their defects were inevitably caused by the makeshifts to which he was sometimes forced by lack of time.

Audubon has credited his father with the only judicious criticism which he ever received at the youthful stage of his art. "He was so kind to me," said the son, "that to have listened lightly to his words would have been highly ungrateful. I listened less to others and more to him, and his words became my law." When he was about seventeen years old, or probably not far from the year 1802,[150] he was sent to Paris to study drawing under Jacques Louis David, the acknowledged leader of French art during the period of the Revolution. This popular artist, who had uttered fierce invectives against "the last five despots of France," became nevertheless court painter under Napoleon; like many another Conventional regicide, he was destined to end his career as an exile from France, and died in Brussels in 1825.

Audubon has said but little of this Paris experience, but he remarked: "At the age of seventeen when I returned from France, whither I had gone to receive the rudiments of my education, my drawings had assumed a form. David had guided my hand in tracing objects of large size."[151] An interesting sidelight is thrown upon this incident by the fact that, not many years before, David had been warmly welcomed in the city of Nantes, when it is not unlikely that the naturalist's father was one of the throng of citizens who made his acquaintance. The occasion to which I refer was so noteworthy in the annals of Audubon's paternal city as to make a digression at this point of our narrative inevitable. In March, 1790, Daniel de Kervegan, a wealthy merchant who was then serving his second term as mayor, had aroused so much enthusiasm by his public spirit and sterling character that the citizens had voted the sum of 300 livres, or about $60, for his portrait, to be executed in oils and placed in one of their public buildings. The commission was offered to David, who accepted it, and with such enthusiasm did he set to work, that upon reaching Nantes he asked the privilege of paying his respects to the Municipal Assembly, which was in session. Upon being admitted to the Chamber, on the 24th of March, he expressed these sentiments:

If ever my art has brought me any gratification, or any success, never before have I had better excuse for boastfulness.

I have made it a duty to respond to the worthy invitations, inspired by patriotism and gratitude, that hallow this most timely and most astounding revolution.

It is your work, gentlemen, and the respect which you render to the chief of your administration which speaks in praise of your sentiments and virtues and which will transmit their memory, along with your glory, to posterity.[152]

David worked on this portrait for about a month, and on April 23, before his departure for Paris, he asked the privilege of again addressing the Assembly. Not only was the request granted, but he was publicly thanked for the trouble he had taken in coming to their city, and a committee was appointed to express the sentiments of esteem with which he had inspired the whole community. We may add that David seems to have taken this canvas to his studio in Paris, where it was subsequently lost or destroyed in the period of turbulence that followed.

David's radical speeches from the tribune, added to his popularity as an artist, no doubt brought him pupils in plenty from every quarter of republican France. Young Audubon was probably admitted to the most elementary class, for he received no instruction in the use of oils but was directed to study the rudiments of drawing from the cast. As he had hoped to perfect himself in the art of depicting animals, he was disappointed. "Eyes and noses belonging to giants," he said, "and heads of horses, represented in ancient sculpture, were my models." He also spoke of drawing "heads and figures in different colored chalks," and of "tolerable figures" obtained by use of the manikin, but adds: "These, although fit subjects for men intent on pursuing the higher branches of the art, were immediately laid aside by me"; yet he "returned to the woods of the New World with fresh ardor,"[153] and there began a series of drawings which were later published.

While this is virtually all that has been recorded of this incident in Audubon's career, a number of interesting facts might be added which throw light upon the surroundings of his life at Paris while under the tuition of this master. At that time David was enjoying the privilege, accorded to eminent artists from an early day, of living with his family and of having his studios in special quarters set apart for the purpose in the palace of the Louvre; this was continued until all the artist tenants were turned out by one of Napoleon's peremptory orders in 1806. David's principal studio was at the corner of the Quai de Louvre and the square, facing the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, at a point occupied in the present structure by the grand staircase leading to the Egyptian Gallery. It was here that his more advanced pupils studied; the appearance of its interior, with his pupils at work, as well as the view from one of its windows, by means of which its exact position can be determined, may be seen today in the interesting painting by Matthew Cochereau. This small picture, first exhibited in the salon of 1814, now hangs in the Louvre in company with some of the finest of David's works, and immediately beneath his huge canvas representing the coronation of Napoleon. Over his principal room David had also a private studio, and at one time he had another on the Quai, opposite the Institute of France, while his numerous pupils occupied a series of rooms, one above another, not remote from the first. Access to these apartments was gained from the street by means of a spiral stairway, the opening of which may still be seen in the Egyptian Hall.

It is common to speak of this gifted man as if he alone had stifled all the art of the eighteenth century in France, as if he were the molder of his age and not a part of it. Too often has he been judged on the basis of a few, unfortunately conspicuous, theatrical pieces, while his excellent portraits, of which there are many, entitle him to the gratitude of posterity. Buchanan remarked that the mannerism of David could "still be traced in certain pedantries discernible in Audubon's style of drawing," which is a fancy without any basis in fact. If it could be shown that drawing from the casts of antique statues could develop mannerisms in the careful delineation of birds and mammals, it would still appear that Audubon's style was really formed at a later period.

This brief Paris episode, which at most could have lasted but a few months, represented all the formal instruction which Audubon ever received in drawing, although he enjoyed some private tuition at a much later day. As to the sciences now embraced in biology, that is, zoölogy and botany, which would have been most useful to him, the score was blank; even books on any of these subjects were rare in America at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

When Audubon first came to the United States, he brought with him all his drawings of French birds, and a few pieces which may belong to this early period have been described.[154] Done in a combination of crayon and water color, they represent a European Magpie, a Coot and a Green Woodpecker, the latter especially, which bore the number "96," showing evidence of care and skill. The year passed at "Mill Grove" was not particularly fruitful, but during the Couëron visit which followed in 1805 and 1806, Audubon said that he made drawings of "about two hundred species of birds," all of which he brought to America and gave to his Lucy. After finally reaching this country in the latter year, these studies were continued, with an alacrity that seldom failed, until 1822, when he began to revise much of his earlier work, substituting water colors more completely for pastels, pencil and crayon point.

In writing to Bachman in 1836, Audubon thus referred to the work of his apprenticeship: "Some of my early drawings of European birds are still in our possession, but many have been given away, and the greatest number were destroyed, not by the rats that gnawed my collection of the 'Birds of America,' but by the great fire."[155] When the naturalist was in Philadelphia in 1824, in search of a publisher and sadly in need of funds, he made the acquaintance of Edward Harris,[156] who looked at the drawings he had for sale and said at once that he would take them all and at Audubon's own prices. Upon his leaving that city, this generous friend, we are told, pressed a $100 bill in his hand, saying: "Mr. Audubon, accept this from me; men like you ought not to want for money." "I could only express my gratitude," continues the naturalist, "by insisting on his receiving the drawings of all my French birds." The worthy Harris cherished this large series of Audubon's early studies and added to it many specimens of his later work. The entire collection remained in his family unbroken and unimpaired until 1892.[157]

This beautiful and unique collection, which represents _The Birds of America_ in the bud, illustrates the development of Audubon's art from about 1800 or a little later to 1821,[158] and clearly shows that the fuller mastery which he attained after the latter date was manifested in no small degree at a much earlier period. His drawings of the Wood Thrush (1806), the Whippoorwill and Kingfisher (1810), the Carolina Parrot (1811), and the Nighthawk (1812), though detached and less ambitious as pictures, for truth of line and delicacy of finish would compare favorably with the best of his later work. After 1820 his ability had so far outstripped his ambition that there was needed only the stimulus of a powerful motive and a well defined plan to bring his powers into full fruition at once. A little later, when he began to revise, enrich and standardize all of his previous work, he used the brush and water colors more freely than ever before. Hundreds of his earlier studies were cast aside; many, to be sure, were hastily drawn in pastel, crayon and pencil, and had not time failed him at the end, nothing of his earlier American period would have remained in the final product.

Nearly all of these rejected drawings bear serial numbers, which from the lack of sequence now observed, show that they were subject to constant change and that their total number must have been great. All bear the scientific and common names in French or English or both, and many are signed with the artist's initials or name; besides giving the place and date, in some cases the weights and measurements of his subjects are added, with detailed sketches of foot, bill, or eggs.[159]

A large crayon sketch of a groundhog, in excellent drawing, is labeled "Marmotte de sauvage, No. 159, le 6 juin, 1805." The Redstart, executed in August of the same year, is a good example of Audubon's more delicate early work; it shows also the attention which he was then beginning to pay to accessories, his bird being perched on a spray of ripening blackberries. The Wagtail, on the other hand, was a rough crayon sketch, dashed off on December 22 of the same year. A pencil and crayon drawing of the Mountain Titmouse, which is a European bird, was probably made from a captive, and at sea, since it bears the date of January 22, 1805, when Audubon was, I believe, aboard the _Hope_.[160] The latest of these French pieces, designated "No. 94. Woodpecker, le 8 mars, 1806. près Nantes; 12 to the tail," was executed, about a month before the naturalist finally left France with Rozier to settle permanently in the United States. The excellence of such a drawing as that of the Wood Thrush (1806) is in marked contrast to the more ambitious "Fish Hawk or Osprey, A. Willson, Perkioming Creek, 1809," in which the bird holds a white sucker in its talons but is less happily rendered. Nine large pastels of waterfowl and two smaller pieces, representing a Robin and Brown Thrush, in the same style, are good examples of Audubon's cruder efforts of that time; they were merely hurried sketches or practice work, with no attempt to finish with all the perfection of detail of which he was then capable.

In a full-size pastel of the Black Surf or Velvet Duck, drawn on December 28, 1806, and signed "J. J. L. Audubon," the note is added: "the only specimen of the kind I have ever seen." He became well acquainted with the Velvet Ducks, now better known as the White-winged Scoters, and in his account of the species says: "As we approached the shores of Labrador, we found the waters covered with dense flocks of these birds, and yet they continued to arrive there from the St. Lawrence for several days in succession. We were all astonished at their numbers which were such that we could not help imagining that all the Velvet Ducks in the world were passing before us."[161]

Several of these drawings are credited to "The Falls of the Ohio," as the rapids of this river at Louisville were then generally called; a number to "Red Banks," the old name of Henderson, Kentucky; while five were done in Pennsylvania, probably when Audubon was at the home of his father-in-law, William Bakewell, in the spring of 1812. An excellent drawing of the Chuck Wills Widow was probably made on the Red River,[162] in Arkansas, when Audubon was exploring that country and slowly making his way to New Orleans in June, 1821, though it should be noticed that a steamboat on which he sometimes traveled was called the _Red River_.

Audubon began in the usual way, by representing his birds in profile, and often on a simple perch, but gradually introduced accessories which eventually became such an important part of his plan that, after 1822, his plates took on more the character of balanced pictures, literally teeming with the characteristic fruits and flowers of America, as well as with insects and animals of every sort, suggestive of the food and surroundings of his subjects, not to speak of American landscapes drawn from many parts of the country.

Dissatisfied with the older methods of drawing birds in the stereotyped attitudes of most stuffed specimens, Audubon made many experiments at "Mill Grove" before hitting upon what he called his "method" of using wires to pierce and hold the body of the bird in any attitude which he desired to represent. His device, which was simple only for one who possessed the requisite knowledge and skill, was publicly exhibited at a meeting of the Wernerian Society at Edinburgh on December 16, 1826. A recently killed bird was fixed in the position desired by means of wires, and placed against a background ruled with division lines in squares to correspond with similar lines on Audubon's paper. The parts, measured if necessary with compasses, were then drawn in, and every part was rendered in due proportion. As to the difficulty of thus securing natural attitudes, aside from any question of draughtsmanship, we have only to recall the bungling work of most taxidermists; there are careful students of animal life who are able to reanimate their subjects, even when reduced to dried and mounted skins, but such ability is not easy to acquire or impart. Method is always subordinate to power, and Audubon at his best, when not hampered by lack of time, was able to represent the living, moving bird in a hundred attitudes never attempted before, which surprised the world of his day by the remarkable skill, freshness and fidelity they displayed.

Some have complained that Audubon, in striving for effect, too often exaggerated the action of his subjects; his birds, like the Frenchman he was, gesticulate too much, while Wilson's were more cautious or sedate, as became a canny Scot. The complaint may be well founded, but the explanation is too trivial for serious consideration. Wilson, like his predecessors, regardless of nationality, merely followed custom, which led by the path of least resistance. Barraband and all the best French artists before him in depicting bird and animal life had done the same, and in their hands the perch, were the subject a bird, became stereotyped to the last degree, as if inserted with a rubber stamp. Audubon followed the same course until he became imbued with the desire of endowing his animals with all the moving energy of which they were capable, whether in seizing their prey, feeding their young, or fighting their enemies. It is well known that many an animal, though ordinarily cautious or even timid, can be roused to vigorous action under the spur of emotion, as when its young are suddenly threatened, and be it warbler, bluebird, or cuckoo, may become a contortionist at a moment's notice. Very few of the 1,065 life-size drawings of birds which appear in his large plates could be truly described as fantastic or unnatural.

Audubon's problem was rendered more difficult by the fact that all of his animals were drawn to the size of life, and because his desire and style compelled him to represent the utmost detail, even to the barbs of a feather or the individual hairs of a mammal. When a landscape was to be included it was not an easy task to harmonize life-sized objects in the foreground with receding objects, and here he sometimes failed. Some of his least happy compositions, however, were the result of haste, as an examination of the originals of his _Birds of America_ has clearly shown; when hard pressed for time he would resort to the scissors and paste, in order to combine the parts of several distinct drawings into one plate, and often leave the backgrounds to be supplied entirely by the engraver. One of the few grotesque results of such methods is seen in plate 141, wherein are represented the Goshawk and the Stanley Hawk; the latter, which was originally designed for different surroundings, has quite lost its center of gravity on an islet amid stream. An early reviewer thought that the artist must surely have intended this for a caricature, as in the case of one of Hogarth's famous prints, in which a man on a distant hill is lighting his pipe at a candle held out of a window in the foreground.

The action of Audubon's subjects was sometimes exaggerated; his birds on the wing were occasionally ill drawn, and other defects might be mentioned. But we must admire his boldness for attempting so many difficult positions, and admit that, when all is considered, he succeeded to admiration, and set a new standard for the illustration of works on natural history.