The Mammals of North America

Author Biography

Born in Haiti in 1785, John James Audubon was a naturalist and painter and is considered one of the greatest natural history artists of all time. Audubon’s childhood fascination with drawing birds became his obsession. He wandered the woods and rivers of the wild frontiers of North America shooting, studying, posing, and painting birds and other animals, and many years later, the resulting books would change the worlds of ornithology and natural history art forever. He is best known for his groundbreaking work The Birds of America, of which only 120 complete original sets are known to exist and which can reach up to $10 million at auction. Less well known is his final work, an equally ambitious project to document the mammals of North America. He painted hundreds of species in their natural habitat in remarkable detail – including many frontier animals depicted for the first time – each characterised by his highly dramatic style.