Audubon's Old Kentucky Home

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From Primedia Publications

By Gail King


	Audubon gained inspiration for his work Birds of America while a resident of Kentucky. The turkey was one of 435 species of fowl included in the series.

When a storm forced John James Audubon's flatboat to tie up on the Ohio River near Henderson, Kentucky, on November 1, 1820, he wrote in his journal, "I can scarcely conceive that I stayed here eight years, for it is undoubtedly one of the poorest spots in the western country, according to my present opinion."

Audubon might like Henderson better now. An artist and pioneer ornithologist, he painted life-size portraits of all the known birds of North America, works that brought him great fame and fortune. Decades later his name was attached to a national organization of bird lovers and conservationists - and to the piece of Kentucky real estate that launched his career in ornithology. The state established a museum in his honor in 1938 in the wooded 700-acre John James Audubon State Park.

Today the recently renovated museum, complete with a new nature observation center, pays homage to Audubon's enormous contribution to art and ornithology. It houses the world's largest collection of Audubon memorabilia along with many of his paintings, including the only existing Audubon oil painting of the bald eagle.

I can scarcely conceive that I stayed here eight years, for it is undoubtedly one of the poorest spots in the western country, according to my present opinion.

John James and Lucy Audubon came to Henderson from Louisville, Kentucky, in 1810 to set up a store. It was an ideal spot, he thought, smaller than Louisville with less commercial competition for his business, nearer to the fast-fading frontier, a paradise of hunting and fishing. Indians still lived nearby. Best of all, the town lay on the Mississippi flyway, a highway in the sky for birds.

During their first few years in Henderson the couple managed to have the best of several worlds. The store proved a commercial success, with not a lot of work on Audubon's part. They were able to acquire a great deal of land. Lucy, a cultured and graceful teacher, and John James, a charming Frenchman whose dancing pleased the society-starved ladies, were a great social success in the village. And, above all, there were birds everywhere. Wild turkeys roamed the woods, passenger pigeons darkened the sky as they flew in to feed, and bald eagles swooped overhead.

After several good years in Henderson things began to go sour. Audubon's ill-planned steamboat and mill ventures went bad just as a growing financial depression wrecked the area's economy. During 1819, his final year in Henderson, he was forced to sell everything. Lucy even lost her treasured piano and her wedding silver. Audubon left Henderson owning only his paintings, his gun, his hunting dog, and the clothes on his back.

The Henderson years make up the "Foundation for Success" section of the chronologically arranged exhibits in the modern Audubon State Park Museum. Starting with Audubon's early years in Santo Domingo where he was born the illegitimate son of a French sea captain, the displays go on to a mill wheel from the ill-fated Henderson mill, followed by his wonderfully successful years, and on toward the end of his life, showing, among other things, a Blackfoot hunting shirt given to him when he took a last great excursion up the Missouri River in 1848 and the first photograph of him, a daguerreotype taken by Mathew Brady that same year.

It is in the museum's two center rooms, called "A Bold Choice" and "Fruits of the Labor," that the wonder of Audubon's life work is most apparent. Desperate to feed his family while he completed paintings for the work that would make him world famous—Birds of America—Audubon found a fellow painter to teach him the rudiments of working in oil, the fashionable and commercial medium of the day. (He preferred pastels and watercolors.) His sons, Victor Gifford and John Woodhouse, posed for his first finished oil paintings. This pair of portraits, used as advertisements of the painter's skill, opened up a way of making a living. The boys' likenesses hang as an introduction to other Audubon works in "A Bold Choice."

Another oil, the 35x44-inch "Bald Eagle," represents the larger oils that paid the family bills as Audubon's reputation began to grow. Although he painted many such works (eagles, beavers—"popular" creatures), most of them were lost.

Audubon's reputation grew large on his Birds of America project. Published in four folio editions between 1827-38 and released in sections of five paintings each, Birds of America today stands as a highly acclaimed tribute to Audubon's genius.

The museum's display called "Fruits of the Labor" includes Audubon's Ledger B in which he recorded the subscribers to Birds. Produced privately by Audubon, most sets were sold in Europe. Kings and princes, queens and dukes agreed to pay $1,000 each for the complete folio edition. This area of the museum also displays the silver forks, teaspoons, and serving pieces Audubon bought for Lucy in England after he began to prosper.

Audubon would surely be impressed with this marvelous tribute to his life. But he might be more fascinated with the adjoining Observation Center where visitors can get a close look at the birds Audubon loved. Sadly, the carbonated warbler, the passenger pigeon, and the Carolina parakeet Audubon watched here are extinct now. But the woods around the museum are full of birds he painted: tufted titmice, blue jays, cardinals, white-crowned sparrows, goldfinches, red-bellied woodpeckers, cowbirds. They feed outside the great glass windows, and their songs, caught in a specially developed speaker system, fill the entire museum.

Could Audubon visit today, he might not think Henderson such a poor spot after all.