John James Audubon (1785-1851)

Audubon was born in 1785 in Haiti, then a French colony known as Saint Domingue. His father was the owner of a sugar plantation, on which the majority of labour was done by enslaved people from West Africa. Audubon's mother was not married to his father, and she died shortly after Audubon's birth. Audubon moved to France at a young age, where he was raised by a stepmother who encouraged his love of drawing and nature.

In 1803, Audubon was sent from France to Philadelphia so he would not be conscripted to fight in the Napoleonic wars. He spent some years on a farm near Philadelphia, where nine enslaved people worked for him, whose forced labour gave Audubon the freedom and money to pursue his passions: hunting, studying and painting birds.

Working as a trader and a business man, Audubon explored Eastern and Central North America. Along the way he collected and painted a huge variety of birds for his most famous publication, The Birds of America, published in 1827-1839. The Birds of America aimed to illustrate every American bird species, depicting even the largest birds in life-sized proportions, and was printed in parts on 'double-elephant' paper which is almost 40 inches wide by 30 inches tall.

Between 1826-1838 Audubon came to Britain to find an engraver capable of meeting his high standards. He spent a total of three years in Edinburgh, where he met and worked with the great Scottish ornithologist William MacGillivray. They became great friends and MacGillivray is credited with much of the scientific content in the extensive texts that accompanied Audubon's superb illustrations. When MacGillivray was appointed to the Chair of Civil and Natural History at Marischal College in 1841, he brought to Aberdeen many items he had been given by Audubon. Most of this material has only come to light in the past few years.