Audubon: Life and Art in the American Wilderness
Inspired by the primeval forests and the vast flocks of birds that thrived in them, Audubon spent the next several decades of his life painstakingly documenting the birds of the American wilderness. He traveled the back roads and bayous, searching out and studying the birds that were his pastime and passion. He spent long, silent hours observing them in the wild. He was no amateur ornithologist; rather, he drew his birds from life, and his work always carried the line “drawn from nature by J. J. Audubon.”
Accompanied by his wife, Lucy, and their two sons, Audubon was able to challenge the world’s expectations and win. The story of this loving family’s long, profound struggle is as poignant and as relevant today as it was in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
Combining meticulous scholarship with the dramatic life story of a naturalist and pioneer, Audubon reexamines the artist's journals and letters to tell the story of Audubon's quest, the origins of the American spirit, and the sacrifice that resulted in one of the world's greatest bodies of art: The Birds of America.
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Book details
- Author
- Shirley Streshinsky
- Imprint
- Turner Publishing Company
- Published
- Pages
- 528
- Formats
- Paperback, Hardcover
- Subjects
- Biography & Autobiography › Environmentalists & Naturalists
Biography & Autobiography › Artists, Architects, Photographers
Art › American - Topics
- John James Audubon · bird illustration · natural history · biography · American art · ornithology · 19th century America
- ISBN-13
- 9781618580252 (Paperback)9781630262747 (Hardcover)
About the author
SHIRLEY STRESHINSKY was a novelist, biographer, and journalist who authored three works of nonfiction and four historical novels, including A Time Between, Gift of the Golden Mountain and Hers the Kingdom. Her nonfiction includes An Atomic Love Story: The Extraordinary Women in Robert Oppenheimer’s Life, co-authored with Patricia Klaus, and Audubon: Life and Art in the American Wilderness.
Streshinsky received the Society of Magazine Writers' Award for Excellence and the National Council for the Advancement of Education Writing award. Her journalism appeared in Glamour, American Heritage, AARP The Magazine and The American Scholar.
A graduate of the University of Illinois, Streshinsky was married to photojournalist Ted Streshinsky and resided in Kensington, California.