Princeton Audubon Prints

Princeton Audubon Double Elephant Edition

Double elephant (life size - 26 1/4 x 39 1/4) •Limited edition of 1500. •Pencil-numbered and embossed with the Princeton Audubon Limited seal. •Up to 11 color plates used. •Specially developed fade-proof inks. Absolute color fidelity to the actual original. •Printed on a 300 line. •Very heavy archival paper which is recommended by the Library of Congress for archives and is specially toned to match the actual color of the antique originals. •Registered to purchaser. •As permanently displayed at The Royal Society of London, to which Audubon belonged as a Fellow.

Princetons began with the purchase of the actual originals which were physically used in the production process. A giant camera with film the same size as the print took a direct-capture picture of the original, and this exact image was transferred directly to the metal printing plates. There are no other Audubon facsimiles which match the quality of Princeton prints.

Each of the two jays was painted separately and in 1829 arranged in a composition depicting them perched on a dead limb entwined with poison ivy.
"The specimen from which the drawings were taken," Audubon wrote, "was presented to me by a friend who had received it from the Columbia River, and is the only individual...which I did not receive on the spot."
Actually, the bird is a native of Mexico rather than the Columbia River area in Oregon, and in painting it, Audubon departed from an early resolve never to draw from a stuffed specimen.  In so doing, he erred and included the magnificent magpie jay with his northwestern birds. 

This stunning Princeton double elephant Blue Crane measures 23 x 30 1/2 inches. It is from our double elephant edition minus the wide margins. The white bird in the background is an immature little blue heron, quite as white as an egret and often mistaken for one since it does not wear its adult plumage until two years of age.  Audubon painted the birds, while the view of the countryside near Charleston, South Carolina, was painted by George Lehman.