AUDUBON, John James (1785-1851), KIDD, Joseph Bartholomew (1808-1889, Painter)
Republican Cliff Swallow
Edinburgh: c.1831. Oil paint on millboard, R. Davy art supply company label on verso. Size: (19 x 12 inches). Framed: (24 1/2 x 17 inches).
An important original ornithological oil painting from the Audubon/Kidd collaboration.
In 1827, while in Edinburgh supervising the engraving of the first part of his double-elephant folio The Birds of America, Audubon met a young landscape artist named Kidd, whom Audubon's engraver Lizars had employed to finish the sky in the background behind one of Audubon's birds. Audubon would write in his journal on March 1, 1827, of Kidd: "I admired him for his talents at so early a period of his life, he being only nineteen. What would I have been now if equally gifted by nature at that age?" In the winter of 1831, Audubon would commission Kidd to copy some of his watercolors in oil and paint in the backgrounds, with the intention of holding an exhibition of the oils, selling the paintings, and dividing the proceeds. In July of 1831, Audubon sent to Kidd sixty-seven drawings "to be painted in oil by him for one pound each." A notice in an 1832 issue of the Caldedonian Mercury details Audubon's plan: "About a year ago Audubon conceived the grand idea of a Natural History Gallery of Paintings, and entered into an agreement with Mr. Kidd to copy all his drawings of the same size, and in oil, leaving to the taste of that excellent artist to add such backgrounds as might give them a more pictorial effect. In the execution of such of these as Mr. Kidd has finished, he has not only preserved all the vivacious character of the originals, but he has greatly heightened their beauty, by the general tone and appropriate feeling which he has preserved and carried throughout his pictures." Kidd delivered to Audubon ninety-four paintings in all. Of those, approximately sixty are extant, including examples at Harvard, the American Museum of Natural History, Princeton, the National Gallery, Yale, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This Audubon image depicts the Republican Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) species, with a male at bottom and a female at the top of the composition, among a cluster of nests affixed to a rocky outcrop. One nest has a fledgling peeking out at its parents. The image would appear in the Havell edition in 1829 as Plate LXVIII, based on a watercolor that Audubon accomplished in Cincinnati in 1820. See Audubon's Ornithological Biography I, pp. 353-357 for his description of the Cliff Swallow, their curious nests, and his encounter with them near Newport, Kentucky. As usual with the Audubon/Kidd oils, the painting is unsigned and undated. This work remained in the possession of the Audubon family until 1863, when Lucy Audubon, the daughter of John Woodhouse Audubon and Maria Bachman, gave it to her grandson Mark F. Zinck, whose signature is on the verso of the board.
Audubon, Ornithological Biography I, pp.353-357. Fries, The Double Elephant Folio: The Story of Audubon's Birds of America, pp.360-367.
Item #29519
Price: $65,000.00