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.
EARLY UNPUBLISHED DRAWINGS OF FRENCH BIRDS: ABOVE, EUROPEAN CROW WITH HEAD OF ROOK, "LE CORBEAU OU CORNEILLE NOIRE DE BUFFON, ENGLISH CROW, EN COMPAGNE AUTOUR DE NANTES, GROLE, PETITE GROLE, NO. 155;" DETAIL, "BEC DE LA FRAGONNE OU FREUX BUFTON—BEC OF THE JAIG DAW NO. 166;" BELOW, WHITE WAGTAIL, "LA LAVANDIERE DE BUFFON. WAG-TAIL, WHATTER WAG-TAIL, WHITE WHATTER WAG TAIL, COMMON DISH WASHER, THE 22 OF DÉCEMBER, 1805. NEAR NANTZ. NO. 65."
Published by courtesy of Mr Joseph Y. Jeanes.