Who was John-James Audubon?

An artist, a scientist, an ornithologist, a naturalist, a poet, an explorer, an adventurer? Undoubtedly, all of them at the same time! Paradoxically, a personality who was very famous in the United States and ignored in his country of origin, France.

John-James Audubon is undoubtedly, with La Fayette, the most famous and most admired Frenchman in the States - Linked.
Born in Santo Domingo in 1785, he was the illegitimate son of a French immigrant, Jeanne Rabin, and a master mariner, Jean Audubon, who owned plantations and slaves on the island. When the mother died, three years later, the father brought the child and his half-sister, Rose, back to Nantes in France. They were received by Jean Audubon’s wife, who raised them as her own children. They were both adopted by the couple, which owned a property in Couëron " La Gerbetière, " located not far from the banks of the Loire.
It was there, in the marshes bordering the river, that the young boy observed, identified and sketched his first birds. This incipient passion would flourish in contact with Charles-Marie d' Orbigny, family doctor devoted to natural sciences, who would become the first curator of the Natural History Museum of La Rochelle in 1836. It is in that museum that new drawings by Audubon have just been discovered.

In 1806, John-James Audubon left France for the United States. He obtained American citizenship there in 1812.
Between 1827 and 1839 he published "Birds of America", 435 large, engraved and coloured prints in "double elephant folio" format, representing life-size birds. The first illustrator to draw them in detail and to reconstitute their behaviour, he knew how to fundamentally change the way people looked at the animal world.
Audubon’s work is today considered to be among the most sought-after and expensive work in the art market.
Audubon died in New York on January 27, 1851, at sixty-six years of age.
Today he is, after La Fayette, the best known Frenchman in the United States, and his portrait hangs in the White House. A symbol of American ecology, he gave his name to one of the most important nature conservancy organisations in the USA, "The Audubon Society." Created in 1886, the society is headquartered in the heart of Manhattan and has more than 500,000 members.

In France, few of our compatriots are familiar with the author of the "Birds of America." A remarkable exhibition was devoted to him, however, in 1960 at the American Arts Centre in Paris, and thousands of reproductions have been made of his works.
Jacqueline Baudouin, director of the Natural History Museum in Nantes, was inspired by John-James Audubon in the 1950s. She published articles about him, gave many talks and lectures, helping to bring him out of oblivion.

More recently, some actions have been undertaken to make him better known :
      - in 1995, the Post Office issued a block of stamps and a series of four stamps on the occasion of an exhibition at the Carré des Arts in the Parc Floral in Paris.