In 1843, John James Audubon posed for Hingham artist Isaac Sprague, who drew his portrait and accompanied him on his ornithological expedition up the Missouri River. Sprague’s portrait and his painting of white-winged scoters are highlights of two exhibits at the Museum of American Bird Art in Canton which feature artists fascinated with birds.
Andy Warhol surprisingly is one of these artists, and the centerpiece of the main gallery is a 3-and-a-half foot square serigraph of the profile of a bald eagle head, one of 10 he made of endangered species in 1983. Warhol, who owned several first edition Audubon engravings, donated the piece to Mass Audubon. And while bird carver Allen James King is not a household name, he is considered the most gifted miniature bird carver of the 20th century, and his pintail duck pair herding five ducklings has an intimacy that contrasts with the grandeur of Warhol’s eagle.
Both pieces are among nearly four dozen works in “Waterbirds: Paintings, Prints, & Sculpture from Mass Audubon's Collection,” through March 31 the museum, which is owned and operated by the Mass Audubon Society. Spanning four centuries, the 38 artists from the U.S., Canada and Europe convey the birds’ beautiful and intricate colors and patterns, lines and shapes, as they wade, swim, and fly amidst marshes, freshwater bodies and oceans.
In the small companion exhibit “John James Audubon: An Introduction,” his 1835 White Egret painting is an example of the masterful representations in his monumental “Birds of America,” life-size, realistic engravings created in Great Britain from his original watercolors. The egret also is the bird that inspired two Massachusetts women in 1896 to form the first Audubon chapter to protect egrets and other birds, slaughtered on mass to provide feathers for ornamental hats.
The introduction also explains the unlikely events that brought Audubon to the United States. Born in Haiti as the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and a French maid, he was adopted by his father after his mother died and raised in France before immigrating to the United States to manage his father’s Pennsylvania property.
As national and local Audubon chapters opened, birding took off as popular pastime with the publication of field guides, particularly ones by artist Roger Tory Peterson whose first guide published in 1934 sold out in the first week. In the exhibit, visitors can see Peterson’s Rice Field Scene, an exquisite watercolor of six birds (American woodcock, Greater Yellowlegs, Pectoral Sandpiper, Killdeer Wilson’s Snipe and Solitary Sandpiper) in a marsh published by the National Audubon Society in its 1950 South Carolina Bird Life.
For its part, the Mass Audubon Society promoted bird art when it offered a 2 ½ year residency to Barry Van Deusen to paint birds in all its 57 wildlife sanctuaries. On view is Least Tern with Chick and Eggshell at Sampson’s Island Wildlife Sanctuary in Barnstable, a 2016 watercolor and pencil work of a chick peeking out from the safety of its mother’s chest, the empty egg shell by her side.
One of the prettiest works in the exhibit is Green-winged Teal by British artist, Michael Warren, a serene watercolor of a single colorful teal who rests on ripping water amidst the reeds, while a dozen other ducks swim together in the background, seemingly oblivious of the lone duck. The most dramatic work is Wandering Albatross, a 1979 large oil painting by British artist Keith Shackleton, where the white and black bird soars in the distance amidst a stormy sky over a roiling ocean.
Unlike traditionally detailed bird carvings, Scarlet Ibises by Charles Greenough Chase is a smooth, polished bubinga wood sculpture of three birds in behavioral display - preening an extended wing, standing tall on a branch and dipping a long curved beak to extract food from the water. In contrast, Night Heron by Gregory Stone, is a carved from a single piece of rough driftwood.
While most works realistically depict birds, Clair de Loon, a serigraph by American Charley Harper, is a flat, playful portrayal of a swimming loon with two babies on her back, their images reflected on the placid moonlit water. And the water color Solitary Bird by Milton Avery is a minimalist graceful outline of an ibis. Through their artful creations, these artists offer visitors another way to appreciate the wonder of birds.
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