Return to list

American wild turkey cock

 
image 0
 
Zoom inZoom inZoom inZoom in
Zoom outZoom outZoom outZoom out
Go homeGo homeGo homeGo home
Toggle full pageToggle full pageToggle full pageToggle full page
Rotate leftRotate leftRotate leftRotate left
Rotate rightRotate rightRotate rightRotate right
Title
American wild turkey cock
Creator
Catalogue Reference
FA.461
Date
1851
Description
An American male turkey turns its head to look behind. The bird is set in an identifiable location: the falls of Ohio near Louisville where the artist and his wife had lived. The turkey’s posture is somewhat awkward and Audubon often used oddly contorted poses for his large birds. There is conjecture it was so he could fit them full-scale into the ‘double elephant’ sized pages of his book, The Birds of America. In her essay Talking Turkey and John James Audubon, Roberta J.M. Olson (Curator of Drawings at the New York Historical Society) persuasively argues that the pose is just characteristic of the bird. Audubon painted three works where he shows an entire turkey family of cock, hen and chicks with the male at the head of the brood but looking back to check on them. Audubon considered the turkey "... one of the most interesting of the birds indigenous to the United States of America", and was so enamoured that he used the original watercolour (c.1825), on which this oil painting is based, as the first plate in The Birds of America. It is understood he painted two copies of the composition in oils while in Liverpool, executing a copy for the Liverpool Royal Society in 23 hours and exhibiting it within 2 days. Another version was a gift for the Rathbone family.
More Information
Scroll down for full metadata
Return to list