Today's Google logo is dedicated to the 226th anniversary of the great American ornithologist, John James Audubon.
volumes(1827-1838).
John James (Jean-Jacques) Audubon was born on 26 April 1785 in Santo Domingo, and died on 27 January 1851 in New York, he was an American naturalized ornithologist, naturalist and painter. Born french, he was naturalized as American in 1812.
He painted, labeled, and described the birds of North America in a manner far superior to his predecessors. Besides the fact that it was a remarkable
painter, Audubon was also a great naturalist, and both these skills helped him greatly to his achievement.
He traveled down the Mississippi river along with his assistant; carrying only a gun and his paintbox, with the intention of finding and painting all the birds of North America. Since 1810 he lived a life of wandering and hunting, observing the nature and reproducing it in his drawings and descriptions.
His "Birds of America" recently became the most expensive book in the world, as it's been sold for ten million dollars at an auction session held by Sotheby's auction house in London on December 7, 2010.
"Birds of America" includes a thousand illustrations of nearly 500 species of birds in natural size. There are currently 119 copies of this book around the world, 108 of them are being hosted in museums.
Audubon's "Birds of America" was originally published as a series, between 1827 and 1938. Each printed copy was colored by hand. Each bird represented in the book was initially shut down by Audubon and then hanged with ropes to be painted. It took at least 60 hour for each drawing.If you can't afford to pay over 10 mil dollars to own the original, you can get a selection of the original drawings and watercolors used in the making of "Birds of America" from Amazon for only $600.
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