REVISITING AUDUBON'S BIRDS OF AMERICA

by Dan Lewis

Julius Bien’s chromolithographic edition of Birds of America is the elephant folio in the room that no one ever talks about. As few as 40 copies of the single volume are thought to exist, but The Huntington has been fortunate enough to receive a copy as a gift from Jay T. Last, Beverly Hills lithography collector and author of The Color Explosion: Nineteenth-Century American Lithography.

John James Audubon’s original edition of copper-engraved, hand-colored plates was called the Double Elephant folio because of the sheer size of the paper—about two by three feet—although the moniker might also apply to the project’s rather long gestation. Born in Haiti in 1785 and raised in France, Audubon was already adept at sketching birds when he arrived in America in 1803. By 1820 he was determined to publish life-sized illustrations of his accurate renderings, and after a false start with an Edinburgh engraver, William Lizars, he eventually secured Englishman Robert Havell Jr. as the engraver in 1827. Sold to subscribers in 87 parts, the entire collection of 435 plates was completed by 1838. Collectors could display the prints as they wished or bind them in multiple volumes. The precise number of complete sets issued by Audubon remains unknown—somewhere between 175 and 200, of which a small percentage have been lost to theft, fire, or war. Still others became known as “breaker” sets since the individual images were sold separately.

Havell used a burin, the tool of choice among copper engravers of the era, which produced extremely fine lines that lent themselves well to hand coloring. Bound volumes intersperse plates of sparrows, wrens, and jays, depicted in their natural habitats, with the occasional large bird of prey or flamingo tucking its neck in acrobatic splendor. Thanks to this engraving technique, known as an intaglio process, one can almost see Audubon folding up these massive birds so they can fit on the rectangular white space, their long necks bent toward some invisible bug or grub on the ground or in a tree.

Havell’s engraving process was expensive and time consuming, however, since he had to hire an army of colorists to complete each and every image. So when John Woodhouse Audubon decided to republish the set in 1858, seven years after his father’s death, he sought out New York printer Julius Bien (pronounced “bean”), a chromolithographer who could make Birds of America more affordable to middle-class Americans.

Like copper engraving, lithography required an enormous amount of labor up front. The process, however, was entirely different. Rather than etching onto copper, lithographers copied images onto slabs of smooth, homogeneous limestone using grease pencils. The limestone was then treated with gum arabic and nitric acid to “fix” the image to the stone. Lithography is based on the natural inclination of water and oil to repel one another; in this case, water repelled greasy printer’s ink. Applied water would soak into the untreated limestone, but not into the areas marked by the pencil. The printer would then apply black ink, which would adhere to the fine lines of the fixed image—but not to the surrounding wet stone surface.

The resulting image would be black and white. Color would still have to be applied by hand, similar to the copper-engraving process—and a financially and logistically daunting task. For instance, the colorists for the copperplate bird images had to apply washes of color to more than 80,000 individual images from Audubon’s original full print run. Chromolithography, a technique that began to gain popularity in the 1850s, brought a major advance. Instead of applying black ink to the entire image and having to hand-color it afterward, the printer would apply a specific color of ink to just one portion of a lithographic stone. He would then line up, or “register,” the paper very carefully, placing it against the stone so that the color transferred to the precise location desired. A separate stone had to be drawn for each color; as many as 20 stones were used for a particular image. This process would then be repeated for the next color, until all of the colors—including black—were deposited on the paper.

Although such a process seemed just as expensive and time consuming as copper engraving, a workshop could mass-produce prints after perfecting that elaborate setup. This certainly appealed to Audubon’s son, although by the end of the 19th century, the comparison between chromolithography and other color processes became moot. Photographic processes and offset printing were taking the place of all hand lithographic methods. The chromolithography practiced by Bien and other 19th-century printers is a direct precursor to the methods used today by color printers.

While the younger Audubon’s scheme sounded like a great plan on paper, the impending Civil War intervened, and work halted in 1860 after the completion of only 105 plates. Subscribers—whether they were northerners or southerners—suddenly had other things on their minds. Sadly, the failed enterprise bankrupted the Audubon family, who had to sell off many original drawings and paintings to debtors.

There are some notable differences between Bien’s set of images and the corresponding illustrations from the Havell copper-engraved edition. Many background details changed between the original and the Bien set. Whitecaps in waves in the backgrounds of images of seabirds disappeared (or appeared anew), quantities of foliage waxed and waned, and the colors of both birds and backgrounds sometimes differed. Bien also sometimes paired illustrations of smaller birds on one sheet, yet another indication of the son’s tight budget. The overall size of the Bien volume still lives up to the elephant name, however, being only a half-inch shorter (39 in.) than the original edition, and the same width (26.5 in.).

It would be unfair to compare the Bien edition to the Havell edition—there is no substitute for hand-coloring, which adds dimension and vitality in a way that chromolithography really wasn’t quite up to doing, especially in the 1850s. And yet the Bien edition remains one of the most important works of 19th-century chromolithography. In producing this set of prints, Bien perfected the use of overprinted transparent inks, which allowed for subtle variations in tone. Some experts also feel that a number of the Bien backgrounds contain a vitality and richness lacking in the originals. The Audubon was, in large part, a kind of college course in chromolithography for Bien, helping to chart his future work in the field. He eventually became a specialist in lithographed maps and charts and also developed new coloring and shading techniques.

While Bien would never become as big a name as Audubon, his impact on chromolithography rivaled the famous naturalist’s contribution to ornithology.

Dan Lewis is the Dibner Senior Curator of the History of Science & Technology at The Huntington. The Bien edition will be on display this fall in the Library Exhibition Hall—in place of Audubon’s original edition.

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