Scientific commentary scott edwards (1 risultati)

Landscape quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 252pp., with many colour illustrations. Minor wear. No dustwrapper as issued. Fine in a slightly rubbed slipcase with a tipped-on illustrated label. Postage quoted is for a standard format octavo book. Final charges may vary depending on size and weight. "One of the great pleasures of [this book], with its lavish reproductions and scientific notes, is that it allows us to see the naturalist turning into the artist, laboring not merely to give his birds scientific accuracy but an almost uncanny life force. In his excellent introduction, Richard Rhodes, the author of a superb biography of Audubon, emphasizes the degree to which Audubon was obsessed with giving dead birds life. This was an artistic problem, but it seems to have had a quasi-mystical quality for Audubon as well. He wanted the creature, drained of life and colour, to spread its wings again. Audubon tried various strategies - hanging the birds from the ceiling by a foot or beak with their wings spread - though the early results were dismal until he hit on a special system: a board covered with sharpened wires in the form of a grid. He impaled the dead bird in a lifelike pose of his own devising and then transferred the bird's likeness to paper, similarly marked with a grid, to ensure proportional accuracy. The book's centerpiece consists of the 116 drawings, reproduced in large format and full color, made during Audubon's first decade in the United States (though the volume includes renderings of European birds made during a visit back to France in 1805.) While this is apprentice work, and many of the birds hold the upright patient pose of a businessman sitting for a portrait, there are several drawings that carry the signature animation that became Audubon's hallmark, whether in the case of a gray catbird opening its wings or a belted kingfisher with the hairstyle and charisma of a punk rocker." - Jonathan Rosen.…