This is the record for the sheet you bought: which original it comes from, how it was digitised, what we did to the file, and what we are allowed to sell. Nothing here is marketing. It is the paperwork.
The sheet you have
- Work
- John James Audubon (1785–1851), American Flamingo, 1838
- Object
- Plate CCCCXXXI, The Birds of America, London 1827–1838, double elephant folio. Hand-coloured aquatint engraved, printed and coloured by Robert Havell Jr. Watermark: J. Whatman 1838. Sheet 97.2 × 65.1 cm
- Held by
- Darlington Collection, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System
- Accession
- pitt:aud0431
- File
- Pitt IIIF, 11192 × 16024 px, 75.1 MB
- Printed at
- 677 dpi at 50 × 70 cm · 485 dpi at 70 × 100 cm
Which impression, and why this one
The flamingo's neck bends down to the ground because the plate had to fit the paper. Audubon drew every bird life-size, and at 97 cm tall the double elephant folio was still not tall enough for a standing flamingo — so the bird feeds, and the composition became the most famous in the book.
What you are looking at is not a photograph of a painting. Havell etched and aquatinted the copper, pulled the impression, and a team of colourists laid the watercolour on by hand, plate by plate, for every one of the roughly 200 sets. Each impression is therefore its own object, and the one digitised here is the Darlington set at Pittsburgh, printed on Whatman paper watermarked 1838.
We took the file from the university's own IIIF endpoint rather than from an aggregator. An earlier version of this product used the same image via Wikimedia Commons — identical in content, but second-hand, which our house rules do not accept.
What we measured
The digitisation's aspect ratio (0.698) differs slightly from the sheet measurements Pitt publishes (0.670), so we state scale against the height rather than the width. Both our sheets are reductions: the original is larger than anything we can print and roll, and we say so on the product page instead of quietly calling the big one "original size".
The uploaded print file is the bare plate without a border. The white border is the sheet around it, not part of the file — which is why one file serves both formats.
What we are allowed to sell
The original. Audubon died in 1851, Havell in 1878, and the plate was published in 1838. Public domain in every market we serve.
The digitisation. Pittsburgh marks the item "No Copyright – United States". That statement speaks only for the US and makes no claim elsewhere; under EU/Swiss law a faithful photograph of a flat public-domain work attracts no new right of its own (DSM Directive Art. 14). So the file is free to use in all our markets — but we describe the work as public domain and credit the digitisation to Pitt separately, rather than calling the file itself "public domain worldwide".
What we did not use. National Audubon Society files, whose terms are non-commercial only.
Our file. The crop, the tonal work and the border are ours. We sell you a print of it; we do not sell you the rights to it.
Rights checked 30 August 2026. One item still open in our own paperwork: the licence page is not yet filed as a PDF alongside the file.
Framing this sheet
- 50 × 70 cm
- Image 42.00 × 60.13 cm, 0.62× original. Margins 4.00 cm sides / 4.59 cm top / 5.28 cm bottom
- 70 × 100 cm
- Image 58.67 × 84.00 cm, 0.86× original. Margins 5.67 cm sides / 7.44 cm top / 8.56 cm bottom
- Orientation
- Both sheets are portrait
- Frame
- A standard 50 × 70 cm or 70 × 100 cm frame takes the sheet as printed, no trimming. Nearest imperial sizes: 20 × 28 in and 28 × 40 in
- Passepartout
- Optional. The printed border already gives the sheet air. If you want a mount as well, go one frame size up rather than cutting into the border
- Glazing
- At 70 × 100 cm use acrylic rather than glass — lighter, and it will not shatter on a large sheet. UV filtering is worth it for the hand-coloured pinks
Measure your frame before you order. Frame sizes vary between makers, and some large frames have a rebate that swallows several millimetres on each side. We give the exact printed dimensions above so you can check; we cannot take responsibility for a frame that turns out not to fit.
All sheet records: museartis.com/pages/sheet-records · Questions about this sheet: info@museartis.com