John James Audubon

French-American · 1785–1851

John James Audubon was a French-American artist, entrepreneur, naturalist, explorer, and ornithologist. His combined interests in painting and ornithology turned into a plan to make a complete pictorial record of all the bird species of North America. He was notable for his extensive studies of American birds and for his detailed illustrations, which were engraved in Scotland and England for a large-format color-plate (intaglio) book titled The Birds of America, and five volumes of accompanying text entitled Ornithological Biography (1831–1839).