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Lot Essay
John James Audubon's life work, The Birds of America, remains today as one of the great achievements of American art and one of the most important documents of natural history. Among the birds depicted in this magnum opus is the Boat-Tailed Grackle, one of the largest birds of its kind in North America, the male reaching almost a foot and a half in length.
After "examining their Manners very Closely," noted the artist and naturalist in his journal during a stop that he made toward the end of his Mississippi River trip in January 1821, he drew a pair of watchful Boat-Tailed Grackles (New-York Historical Society, New York). He noted in his journal that the Boat-Tails' "walk is Elegant and Stately carrying their Long concave tails rather high." As noted by Carole Anne Slatkin, in the closely related example at the New-York Historical Society, "he showed each perched bird gracefully elevating its conspicuous, spatulate tail, which grows to a length of seven inches in the male, and from which the species' name derives. In his composition of Boat-Tails made about ten years later, from which Havell produced the engraving for The Birds of America, [Plate CLXXXVII] Audubon again showed the male with tail raised and long, heavy bill open, perched in a live oak below the female, each bird again with a keenly alert expression." (John James Audubon, the Watercolors for The Birds of America, New York, 1993, p. 94).
Audubon frequently made multiple watercolors of the same species of birds, often re-working poses and subjects before selecting the most characteristic composition for the final, engraved image. Of the known extant watercolors of the Boat-Tailed Grackle, the example in the New-York Historical Society relates closely to this image, with the pose of the birds altered here to create a dramatic, horizontal composition, in contrast to the vertical composition of the Historical Society watercolor. Here, however, the artist also places the male in front of the brown-feathered female, and overlaps the tails of the birds, and depicts both with crisp, precise details, finished with exceptionally refined pencil lines to create a vivid iridescence on the feathers of the grackles. And, with a naturalist's touch, Audubon includes the species' egg in a corner of the composition.
After "examining their Manners very Closely," noted the artist and naturalist in his journal during a stop that he made toward the end of his Mississippi River trip in January 1821, he drew a pair of watchful Boat-Tailed Grackles (New-York Historical Society, New York). He noted in his journal that the Boat-Tails' "walk is Elegant and Stately carrying their Long concave tails rather high." As noted by Carole Anne Slatkin, in the closely related example at the New-York Historical Society, "he showed each perched bird gracefully elevating its conspicuous, spatulate tail, which grows to a length of seven inches in the male, and from which the species' name derives. In his composition of Boat-Tails made about ten years later, from which Havell produced the engraving for The Birds of America, [Plate CLXXXVII] Audubon again showed the male with tail raised and long, heavy bill open, perched in a live oak below the female, each bird again with a keenly alert expression." (John James Audubon, the Watercolors for The Birds of America, New York, 1993, p. 94).
Audubon frequently made multiple watercolors of the same species of birds, often re-working poses and subjects before selecting the most characteristic composition for the final, engraved image. Of the known extant watercolors of the Boat-Tailed Grackle, the example in the New-York Historical Society relates closely to this image, with the pose of the birds altered here to create a dramatic, horizontal composition, in contrast to the vertical composition of the Historical Society watercolor. Here, however, the artist also places the male in front of the brown-feathered female, and overlaps the tails of the birds, and depicts both with crisp, precise details, finished with exceptionally refined pencil lines to create a vivid iridescence on the feathers of the grackles. And, with a naturalist's touch, Audubon includes the species' egg in a corner of the composition.