When European commentators in the 1830s admired the brilliantly colored, life-size prints in John James Audubon’s The Birds of America, they found the backgrounds almost as enthralling as the birds: forest clearings, swamps and canebrakes and waving prairie grasses—an unknown country. The land, not the sea, was Audubon’s element. Whereas “the Land Bird flits from […]
Source : Out of His Element
