Clarke's Nutcracker
6 3/4 inches by 10 1/4 inches.
ABT131 $155
John James Audubon (1785-1851) was born in the French colony of Santa Domingo (later known as Haiti) to a wealthy French sea captain & merchant and a young slave, Jeanne Rabin, who died six months after his birth. Early on, Audubon became passionately interested in nature, avoiding whenever possible the rigors of the French educational system by wandering in the countryside sketching & collecting.
He was sent by his father to his plantation Mill Grove in Pennsylvania possibly to avoid conscription into Napoleon’s army. There he pursued his love of nature and collecting in a bountiful environment, to the detriment of the business of running his father’s plantation.
We are pleased to offer hand colored prints from the last edition of the most accessible of all the Audubon works, the quarto Birds of America, published by George R. Lockwood in 1871. This edition was produced by the firm which took over the lithographic stones from the Audubons following their bankruptcy. It is the rarest of the quarto editions as the plates were destroyed in a fire.
The later editions differ from the first quarto edition in that there are added color printed backgrounds on some. The birds and foliage remain hand colored as in the first edition. The prints are in wonderful condition on heavy wove paper with no foxing and vibrant hand coloring. They represent a great bargain for original Audubon prints. The text pages are included and when overlapped, have been carefully copied. It is a great pleasure for us to present this work almost in its entirety with a wonderful array of the top plates at a fraction of the cost of the first edition.
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