John James Audubon, Ornithological Artist

(Wikimedia)

There was a time, before photography, when scientific illustration rose to the level of fine art. For example, before she became the "mother" of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter did scientific drawings, especially of mushrooms.

But few made as big a splash in the borderlands between art and science as did the Haitian-born American ornithologist John James Audubon (1785-1851).

His major work, The Birds of America (1827–1839), depicted his subjects in their natural habitats, and is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed. Audubon is also known for identifying 25 new species.

His father was a French landowner in what is now the country of Haiti; his mother was a servant in his father's house, and died when the baby was only a few months old. He returned to France around age four, where he was raised by his father's legal wife.

As he grew, he learned to ride and fence, and loved to walk in the fields, returning home to sketch the birds' eggs and nests he had collected. His father encouraged these artistic leanings. At age 18, the lad who had been known as Jean-Jacques Anglicized his name to John James and set off for the United States.

He became a U.S. citizen and attempted to establish himself in business, but his true passion was studying and painting birds. He wrote later: "I felt an intimacy with them...bordering on frenzy..." At some point he conceived a project which was to consume the rest of his life, and become his legacy: he planned to find and paint every bird in North America, a monumental undertaking which resulted in his gargantuan The Birds of America.

The book was printed over a period of 12 years, consisting of 435 engraved and hand-painted plates measuring 39 by 26 inches--that's a book over a yard tall! It was originally issued as separate plates, and different subscribers bound it in different ways. The book includes illustrations of six species which are extinct today. It is estimated that not more than 200 complete sets were ever compiled; only 120 copies are known to still exist, and they fetch record prices when sold: Sotheby's sold one for approximately $11.5 million in 2010, a record auction price for a printed book.

The National Audubon Society was started and named for John James Audubon a half-century after his death. It is the oldest conservation organization in the world, educating the public through its 500 chapters.

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PRACTICE:

Vocabulary: Match the words to their meaning. Correct answers are in the first comment below.

1. Anglicized
2. extinct
3. fetch
4. frenzy
5. gargantuan
6. intimacy
7. leanings
8. legacy
9. ornithologist
10. splash

A. tendencies; inclinations
B. huge; gigantic
C. bring
D. familiarity; closeness
E. a person who studies birds
F. craziness
G. an impression
H. changed to English
I. something that someone leaves behind for future generations
J. no longer in existence; not found alive anymore

QUESTIONS TO ANSWER:

Answer the following questions in your own words. Suggested answers are in the first comment below.

1. Where was Audubon born? Where did he grow up?
2. What distinction did Audubon have as a scientist?
3. How large is The Birds of America?
4. How rare is The Birds of America?
5. What distinction does The Birds of America hold in the art market?

QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT:

These questions do not have "right" or "wrong" answers. They only ask your opinion.

1. Do you think it's possible for a scientific illustration to be both beautiful and accurate?
2. Do think it's important for a person to have a passion for his work, as Audubon describes?
3. Based on hints in the text, why do you think there are so few copies of Audubon's book in the world?

All the Colors of the Rainbow

We sometimes talk about "all the colors of the rainbow," meaning every possible color. And it's true: When we see an actual rainbow, the colors blend from one to the next and we see virtually all the colors (except maybe black, gray, white, brown, and--purple! Violet will have to do.)

But the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton divided the rainbow into seven bands: The colors he named are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo (a kind of dark blue), and violet.

We can remember these colors using this mnemonic that sounds a little like a man's name: ROY G BIV. Of course, this is nonsense; but some English people use the more logical (but harder to remember) phrase, "Richard of York gave battle in vain."

If you don't like either of these, make up one of your own!

Edouard Manet, Early Impressionist

Edouard Manet
(Wikipedia)

Edouard Manet (1832-1883) was a French painter whose work opened up new possibilities in art, in several ways.

Before Manet, many artists concentrated on scenes from the Bible, or from classical stories like Greek or Roman mythology. Other artists focused on landscapes (paintings of scenery) or still lifes (arrangements of items on a table, perhaps including flowers, food, dead animals, books, tableware, and so on). In addition to such traditional subjects, Manet painted modern life: people in modern clothing drinking and dining in bars and cafes, boating on lakes, and strolling in the city. His café paintings were especially notable, showing people doing everyday things: reading, flirting, or just waiting for friends.

Hiroshige, Japanese Woodblock Artist

Portrait of Hiroshige as a Buddhist monk

Click to see Vol. I, Issue 10 of the newsletter in which this article first appeared.

Listen to the audio of this article!

The Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858; also called Ando Hiroshige but usually known simply as "Hiroshige") was a traveler and keen observer. 

Hiroshige was born in what was then called Edo, now Tokyo. His parents died when he was twelve; his father, fire warden for the area, left his duties to his young son. In charge of preventing fires in the Shogun's home, Edo Castle, he began painting during his ample leisure time. Though working as an apprentice, by age 15 he was permitted to sign his own works.

At age 26, he passed most of his fire warden duties on to his son, and continued to paint and produce ukiyo-e, the woodblock prints for which he became famous. The art of woodblock printing is a painstaking process. The artist carves a piece of wood (in reverse) and makes a print from it. At first, prints were in one color, sometimes with other colors added by hand.

But by Hiroshige's time, prints were often made using multiple blocks, one for each color. This allowed for easy reproduction, and the beautiful but inexpensive prints were collected by the rising merchant class in Edo.

Hiroshige came along near the end of ukiyo-e's two centuries of popularity. He produced over 8,000 works, mainly on the popular themes of the day: beautiful women, famous actors, historical and literary scenes, flowers and animals, and, most notably, landscapes.

Perhaps the most famous of these is his Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (made in several editions, the first in 1833-34). This showed the stations along a road from Edo to Kyoto. At that time, the Emperor lived in Kyoto, but the military ruler, the Shogun, was in Edo. The road was built with 53 stations along the way, to facilitate rapid communication between the two cities.

[In 2001, the 400th anniversary of that road, I made the journey, walking for 35 days entirely on foot. Along the way, I tried my best to take photos matching the scenes Hiroshige portrayed. Though much has changed, some of the sights were still there to be seen.]

In 1856, Hiroshige retired from the outside world and became a Buddhist monk. He died in 1858, just as modernization was bringing an end to the popularity of ukiyo-e. His influence lived on, however, and Western artists like Monet and van Gogh were known to be admirers of his work.

Hakone, #11 of Hiroshige's Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido

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PRACTICE:

Vocabulary: Match the words to their meaning. Correct answers are in the first comment below.

1. admirers
2. ample
3. apprentice
4. carves
5. facilitate
6. in reverse
7. keen observer
8. literary
9. notably
10. painstaking
11. reproduction
12. warden

1. making copies
2. a kind of student who works for a "master"
3. plenty of
4. make something easier or even possible
5. requiring great care and/or hard work
6. backwards
7. importantly
8. a kind of guard; person in charge of
9. from stories or poems
10. one who looks carefully
11. people who like or respect something
12. cuts into something using a knife

Questions to Answer: Answer the following questions in your own words. Suggested answers are in the first comment below.

1. What unusual job did Hiroshige have as a boy?
2. How did his "day job" make it possible for him to become a painter?
3. What is an ukiyo-e? Who bought them?
4. What were some of the subjects of Hiroshige's art? What series was especially well known?
5. How did Hiroshige influence western art?

Questions to Think About: These questions do not have "right" or "wrong" answers. They only ask your opinion.

1. What advantage do you think ukiyo-e artists had over, say, oil painters?
2. Why do you think travel pictures were so popular? What sorts of "travel pictures" do we make today?
3. Why do you think a successful artist like Hiroshige would become a Buddhist monk?

Botticelli's "La Primavera"

Botticelli's La Primavera (Spring) Click image to see VERY LARGE version

Click to see Vol. I, Issue 6 of the newsletter in which this article first appeared.

Listen to the audio of this article!

We tend to take for granted that things are what we are told they are. So Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa--a name he almost certainly never heard it called. "Homer" wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey--though we have no idea if a person by that name ever lived.

My point is, names become affixed to people, places, and things, and then we take those names as "true," though they may have been later inventions.

Such is the case with a painting that frequently makes it onto various "greatest of all time" lists. Allegory of Spring, often simply called Spring (La Primavera in Italian), was not given that name by artist Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510). In fact, it has been called "one of the... most controversial paintings in the world" because the idea that it depicts Spring is only a consensus among critics. There are other possible interpretations, including that it depicts Neoplatonic love. (The name La Primavera was given to it by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), the same art historian who said the painting previously known as La Gioconda depicted a woman he called "Mona Lisa.")

Assuming we are indeed dealing with an allegory of Spring, the six female and two male figures in the painting (not counting the blindfolded Cupid above them) center on a slightly pregnant-looking image of Venus, goddess of love and fertility, a fitting representation of the abundance of Spring.

To her left (our right) are two females and a male, perhaps synchronously telling the story of Zephyrus (the first wind of Spring) and a nymph named Chloris, whose name means "green." The dark, winged male figure is grabbing the central female, seeming to kidnap her; the other female, then, is Spring herself, sometimes called Flora ("Flowers"), a transformed version of Chloris after her mating with the wind god. She is shown scattering roses on the ground.

On the other side is a group of three females, the Graces (Splendor, Mirth, and Good Cheer, or perhaps Pleasure, Chastity, and Beauty) dancing in celebration of Spring. The final figure, guarding the scene from encroaching clouds on the far left, may be Mercury or Mars. (That's what the "experts" say, anyway; he looks to me like he's picking fruit!)

So, there are three "scenes," this time left to right:

• The Three Graces celebrate Spring, protected from foul weather by a god (Mercury or Mars);
• Venus, goddess of love and fertility, is in the center, presiding over the whole; and
• Chloris is impregnated by the first wind of Spring, and is transformed into Flora: Spring herself.

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PRACTICE:

Vocabulary: Match the words to their meaning. Correct answers are in the first comment below.

1. abundance
2. affixed
3. allegory
4. blindfolded
5. consensus
6. encroaching
7. inventions
8. Neoplatonic love
9. synchronously
10. take for granted

1. with the eyes covered by a cloth
2. assume something is true
3. the majority of opinion
4. at the same time; showing scenes from two or more different times in one image
5. a representation of an abstract concept in concrete words or images
6. new ideas
7. moving beyond the proper limit
8. plenty
9. a "spiritual" form, not involving physical relations
10. fastened

Questions to Answer: Answer the following questions in your own words. Suggested answers are in the first comment below.

1. Did Botticelli intend to call this painting "Spring"? What's the story of its name?
2. Who is the pregnant-looking figure in the center? What does she stand for?
3. Who are the three figures on our right? What is happening there?
4. Who are the three women to the left of Venus? What are they doing?
5. Who is the man on the left? What is he doing?

Questions to Think About: These questions do not have "right" or "wrong" answers. They only ask your opinion.

1. Do you think it's important to know the "true names" of things?
2. Do you think the interpretation that this picture is about "Spring" is the correct one?
3. Thinking allegorically, how could "the first wind of Spring" make a woman whose name means "Green," into "Spring" (or Flowers) after mating with her?

European Cave Art

Sautuola's 1880 illustration of the great hall of polychromes of Altamira

Click to see Vol. I, Issue 2 of the newsletter in which this article first appeared.

Listen to the audio of this article!

Altamira

Reproduction of a bison drawing in Altamira's great hall

In 1868, Modesto Cubillas Pérez, a weaver who also worked on the farm of a Spanish jurist and amateur archaeologist named Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, was out hunting when his dog ran away. While searching for the dog, Cubillas discovered a cave on Sautuola's property.

In 1879, Sautuola's eight-year-old daughter María led him into the cave to observe some drawings on the walls. The polychrome drawings portray the abundant wildlife of an ancient era: the steppe bison (now extinct), horses, goats and deer, and what may be a wild boar. There are also abstract images, and the outlines of handprints made by blowing powder over a hand placed on the wall.

Sautuola called in a professional archaeologist from the University of Madrid, and in 1880 they published their find, claiming the drawings were from the Paleolithic era.

Other professionals rejected and ridiculed their conclusions; the drawings were in such pristine condition that they seemed to be fake.

It was not until other, similar sites were found that Sautuola's conclusions were accepted, in 1902. Unfortunately, he was not around to hear their apologies: he had died 14 years earlier.

The cave is about 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) long, with a series of chambers connected by twisting passages. Artifacts deposited under the floor indicate two periods of occupation: about 18,500 years ago, and again from 16,590 to 14,000 years ago. In between, only wild animals lived in the cave.

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Trois-Freres

Drawing of the "Sorcerer" at Trois-Freres

In 1914, three young men, sons of Count Henri Begouen, were exploring caves on their father's land along with a couple of their friends when they stumbled onto an amazing find. Now called "Trois-Freres," meaning "Three Brothers," the cave is considered one of the most important sites of Paleolithic cave art.

After the war, the site was studied by famed French priest-archaeologist Abbe Henri Breuil, who rated it one of the six best in the world (there are some 350 painted caves in France and Spain alone).

The cave is over 1,300 feet (400 meters) long, and is located on three levels. The river that created the caves still flows through the bottom-most level; the upper two contain an explosion of over 350 figures, which seem to date back as early as 15,000 to 14,000 years ago.

The art of Trois-Freres includes 84 horses, 170 bison, 20 ibex (a kind of wild goat), 40 reindeer, eight bears, six felines, two mammoths, one woolly rhinoceros, six birds, seven human- or god-like figures, five hand stencils, and numerous wedges, dots, semi-circles, and other abstract designs.

The cave may be best known, though, for a controversial figure called "The Sorcerer." No one knows what he (or it) really symbolizes, but Breuil guessed it was a type of priest or magician dressed for a ceremony. Others see it as a "Master Animal" (a kind of spirit) or even a god. Most people know it from Breuil's drawing, which in recent years has been challenged as inaccurate.

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Lascaux

A horse at Lascaux

In September 1940, an 18-year-old was out in southwestern France with his dog, Robot, when Robot fell into a hole. Returning with three friends, the young man descended a 50-foot (15-meter) shaft to discover galleries filled with images primarily of large animals that would have lived in the area some 17,000 years earlier.

Father Breuil showed up here, too, and his drawings are heavily relied upon today due to the deterioration of the originals caused by the carbon dioxide expelled by visitors--some 1,200 per day--from the cave's opening to the public in 1948 until its closing in 1963.

The galleries have been given picturesque names like the Hall of the Bulls and the Chamber of Felines. The paintings are the work of many generations of artists, and include nearly 6,000 figures of animals (over 900), humans, and abstract designs. Of the animals, 605 have been identified with certainty. 364 of these are horses, and 90 are stags. Others include cattle and bison, felines, a bird, a bear, a rhinoceros, and a human.

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We sometimes like to think that we modern humans are the best at everything. But the sophistication of the artwork in these caves dates back to a time when much of Europe was still covered in ice and reindeer was the main dish in many a meal in France and Spain.

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PRACTICE:

Vocabulary: Match the words to their meaning. Answers in the first comment below.

1. abundant
2. amateur
3. archaeologist
4. chamber
5. descended
6. deterioration
7. extinct
8. felines
9. jurist
10. mammoths
11. Paleolithic Period
12. polychrome
13. pristine
14. ridiculed
15. stumbled onto

1. many-colored; not just black-and-white
2. no longer living anywhere on earth (like the dinosaurs)
3. room or room-like opening
4. found accidentally
5. the earliest part of the "Stone Age"; though it started as long as two million years ago, the final phase was around 40,000-12,000 years ago
6. large elephant-like creatures no longer found on earth
7. specialist in the study of prehistoric peoples and their cultures
8. went down
9. plentiful; easy to find
10. not professional
11. perfect; in "mint condition"
12. made fun of
13. judge, lawyer, or other person trained in the law
14. disintegration; act of become less and less perfect
15. cats and cat-like animals (lions, etc.)

Questions: Answer the following questions in your own words. Suggested answers in the first comment below.

1. Which site--Altamira, Trois-Freres, or Lascaux--was found first? Which has the oldest paintings?
2. What unfortunate thing happened to Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, owner and first archaeologist of Altamira?
3. How did the cave called "Trois-Freres" get its name?
4. What unusual figure is found in Trois-Freres cave? What do the experts say about it
5. What constitutes the main type of figures at Lascaux?