Pinnated Grous Audubon Print. Princeton Audubon. The world's only direct camera edition of this image.
Pinnated Grous
John James Audubon’s Birds of America
Princeton Audubon Double Elephant Edition of 1500.
26 1/4 x 39 1/4; Condition: Mint
Nature is never out of style, so ... Feather your nest!
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“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 ...
This painting was probably done in 1824, when Audubon was near the Great Lakes. It depicts two males fighting over a female and is one of the few works in which Audubon drew all three of the compositional elements: birds, plants, and landscape. Of the tiger lily Audubon wrote: "This beautiful plant,...grows in swamps and moist copses, in the Northern and Eastern States, as far as Virginia, as well as in the western prairies,...I was forced to reduce the stem, in order to introduce it into my drawing, the back ground of which is an attempt to represent our original western meadows."
The greater prairie chicken, found in such abundance by the artist when he lived in Kentucky, is now uncommon and seriously declining over much of its range. During the mating season the males in a given area gather in the early morning on courtship grounds, there to display before the females. As described by Dr. Frank M. Chapman: "The feather-tufts on either part of the neck are erected like horns, the tail raised and spread, the wings drooped, when the bird first rushes forward a few steps, pauses, inflates its orange-like air-sacs, and with a violent, jerking, muscular effort, produces the startling boom, which we may have heard when two miles distant." The booming note is much like one made by blowing across an empty bottle.