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John James Audubon,
ornithologist, naturalist, and writer, was born in Haiti in
1785, the natural son of a French slave
trader and a Creole woman. After Audubon's mother was
killed in a slave insurrection in Haiti, John James was raised
in France by his father's wife. As a young man of 18, Audubon
fled from conscription into Napolean armies, smuggled himself
out of France, and came to the United States.
He tried and failed at a series
of money-making schemes before he turned to painting. Once
he did, his dogged pursuit of featheres subjects led him on
hunting parties with the Osage Indians, whose language he
spoke; and even into the company of Daniel Boone.
Audubon's spare and stylized
paintings - accomplished by first killing
and stuffing the birds he so admired - served as a
foil to his chaotic life. The subjects' highly mannered poses
bespeak tha painter's romantic sensibility, and his pictures
tell almost human stories of flirtation, pride, and anger.
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"Wanderlegs" is how
Audubon described the affliction that kept him adrift in the
forests and swamps of nineteenth-century America. He once
wrote to his anxious wife, in a letter written in New Orleans
and dated May 3, 1821 : "Thou art not, it seems, as daring
as I am about leaving one place to go to another, without
the means . . . without one cent." Audubon did hold for
a time in 1821 at a cottage at 505 Dauphine in the French
Quarter, working on his Birds of America series in his studio
at 706 Barracks Street. Audubon never
lost his French accent, and even permitted rumors to spread
that he was the lost Dauphin of France. But when he
returned to France on a few occasions to visit, Audubon posed
as the wild outdoorsman of the frontier - a noble French savage
in buckskin and leggings.
New Orleans has
since honored the painter in its naming of Audubon Park and
Audubon Zoo.
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