June 27, 2012 1:04 pm
America’s Other (Lady) Audubon
Photo: Princeton Architectural Press, 2012
Genevieve Jones got an early start as a birder. Born in the 1850s, the 6-year old would accompany her father on egg collecting trips to fill the family’s curiosities shelf. She wanted to create a book illustrating different nests and eggs of bird species, but her family discouraged her since producing such a book would be exorbitantly expensive. Her chance finally arrived after her parents broke up her engagement to an alcoholic and encouraged their daughter to pursue the project as a concession to ruining her romantic dreams.
Brain Pickings reviews the new book by Joy M. Kiser, America’s Other Audubon, that tells Gennie’s depressing but inspiring tale:
Family and friends rushed in to support the project and Gennie set out to illustrate the 130 species of birds that nested in Ohio, many common throughout the rest of America.
She would name the book Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio, and planned to charge $5 for the hand-painted version or $2 for the uncolored version—what a steal. When the first batch of mailings went out, the project seemed destined for wild success. Indeed, Gennie’s artistic and ornithological gifts might have boosted her to fame rivaling that of the celebrated John James Audubon. But just as things were looking up, tragedy struck.
A mere month after the first part was mailed, she contracted typhoid fever and fell violently ill. On her deathbed, she instructed her brother to keep the project alive and enlist the help of their mother in producing the illustrations. She died on Sunday, August 17, 1879, at the age of thirty-two.
Her suitor promptly killed himself in protest, and her family plummeted into grief. They became obsessed with realizing Gennie’s vision for the book. Her parents took up illustrating the meticulous eggs and nests, despite catching (and surviving) typhoid themselves. In 1886, the book was finally finished.
But the folio-sized treasure was too expensive for almost anyone to afford and, even though Gennie’s father had spend his entire retirement savings of $25,000 to finance the project, not enough copies of the book were sold to offset the production costs. Virginia became temporarily bind for nearly two years, having strained her eyes so severely to complete the work, and the family was on the brink of poverty — but they never complained.
Still, the book eventually found its way to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where it was appraised at $80,000. Copies of that labor of love are now for sale, though the hand painted $5 offer has expired.
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
1 Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
August 19, 2012
For all intents and purposes, it seems Genevieve Jones was not the other Audubon.
John James Audubon created watercolors. Watercolors reproduced result in reproductions, -not- original works of visual art such as engravings, etchings or lithographs.
On http://www.princetonaudubon.com/ website, it states: “Havell took {John James Audubon} watercolor studies, engraved and etched a reverse image of the compositions on polished copperplates, inked the plates, placed dampened paper upon them, and rolled them through the press about 200 times for each copperplate image. (433 watercolor studies resulted in 435 copperplate etchings, as two compositions were double.) These images were then colored in an assembly line fashion, each artist having his own color to apply. It is not known whether Audubon himself actually assisted in any of the actual engraving or coloring at all. But he certainly supervised the work. The finished result was about 200 prints for each of the 435 copperplate etchings.”
So, in reality, John James Audubon hired the chromist Robert Havel to reproduce his work as engraved and/or etched reproductions not engravings or etchings.
As for the so-called John James Audubon’s “Birds of America” watercolors, J.T. Bowen was a chromist who posthumously reproduced lithographically those watercolors resulting in chromist-made reproductions.
Since the above chromist did not obviously create the watercolors in question but just copied them, no matter how well he may have captured the details, at best, he captured them as reproductions.
The chromist J.T. Bowen may have been an accomplished artist but in this case he was -not- creating his own artwork ie., lithographs, he was copying someone else’s artwork, in this case John James Audubon’s watercolors, resulting in reproductions.
Lithographs are -original- works of visual art -created- by an artist, no different than any other original creative medium such as painting, sculpture and the like created by an artist.
Unfortunately, the widespread misconceptions by the public, in majority because of misrepresentation -with or without intent- throughout the art industry, is that lithographs are copies of artwork.
To the contrary, lithographs are -original- works of visual art “wholly executed by hand by the artist” and “excludes any mechanical and photomechanical processes.”
Caveat Emptor!
Gary Arseneau
artist, creator of original lithographs & scholar
Fernandina Beach, Florida
Comment by Gary Arseneau — August 19, 2012 @ 11:26 am