Wood Thrush
Audubon’s favorite bird
John James Audubon’s Birds of America
Princeton Audubon Double Elephant Edition of 1500.
What is a double elephant?
26 1/4 x 39 1/4; Condition: Mint
Nature is never out of style, so ... Feather your nest!
Thank you for visiting Princeton Audubon!
“Of all the full-size facsimiles of Audubon's prints, those from Princeton Audubon Ltd. come the closest in appearance and quality to the originals. Combining this with their very reasonable cost makes Princeton Audubon facsimiles winners for those looking to acquire some of the most dramatic American natural history images ever produced." - Chris Lane, Philadelphia Print Shop West, appraiser on Antiques Roadshow.
Of our prints, William Steiner, author of Audubon Prints: A Collector’s Guide To Every Edition wrote, “True prints, true colors, incredible detail. Princetons are simply the finest Audubon facsimiles ever made!”
We purchased the actual antique originals in order to accurately produce this award-winning edition, giving you a connection to Audubon’s original work. Read more ...
In order to create this spectacular print, we needed to purchase the actual original. Measuring more than two feet by three feet, the birds are the same size as in life.
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.
Our prints have this embossed seal at the lower right of the paper ...
... and are pencil-numbered in the lower left under the printed script.
Here are the printing specifications ...
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.
About the image itself ...
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Based on a composition painted on April 21, 1822. Joseph Mason worked on the background.
"This bird is my greatest favourite of the feathered tribes of our woods. To it I owe much," Audubon wrote, and added a lengthy sentence of explication. "How often has it revived my drooping spirits, when I have listened to its wild notes in the forest, after passing a restless night in my slender shed, so feebly secured against the violence of the storm, as to show me the futility of my best efforts to rekindle my little fire, whose uncertain and vacillating light had gradually died away under the destructive weight of the dense torrents of rain that seemed to involve the heavens and the earth in one mass of fearful murkiness,..." He concluded, "...how fervently...have I blessed the Being who formed the Wood Thrush, and placed it in those solitary forests..."
The most familiar of our spotted, woods-dwelling brown thrushes, and the only one that frequently makes his home near human habitations, surely the wood thrush has one of the clearest and sweetest songs ever to float from a woodland edge on a summer day. Thoreau wrote of it: "Whenever a man hears it he is young, and Nature is in her spring;..."
