To be fair, Audubon killed most or all of his bird models, I believe,
so he did see them in the wild. His paintings were far more realistic
than any available at the time, and I'm pretty sure his eye compares
way more favorably to my "modern eye," although I'm sure Mr. Nelson's
is far superior to either;-)
I still love Audubon's paintings.
Skins are still extremely valuable for learning and comparing species
and variants of birds even if they do not represent what one would see
in the natural habitat.
On Apr 26, 2011, at 1:16 PM, john c. nelson wrote:
The birds on theG oogle logo are John James Audubon paintings and
yes they do look strange to our modern eye.
Not having a camera his paintings were done with "birds in
hand" (dead) for models.
They were done150-200 years ago.
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