John James Audubon – American Flamingo, 1838 | Giclée Print

Audubon drew the American Flamingo in 1838, near the end of The Birds of America. The bird stands over four feet tall. The page he was working to — the double elephant folio, the largest book anyone had seriously attempted — measured about thirty-nine inches by twenty-six. It was not enough.

So he bent the bird. The flamingo lowers its head to the water in a curve that fills the sheet corner to corner, neck folded back on itself, the whole animal compressed into the only rectangle available. It is a solution to a printing problem, and it produced one of the most recognisable images in ornithology.

Above the bird, small and precise, Audubon set nine studies: the beak seen from several angles and opened in section, and the webbed foot. He was a hunter and a showman, but he was also keeping notes.

Scale
Most print shops stretch any image onto any sheet without comment. We do not. Audubon's folio is larger than any sheet we print, so this one goes the other way: both sizes are reductions, and the factor is named.

The print
Giclée on 200 gsm FSC-certified fine art paper, twelve pigment inks. White border, optical centre. The paper tone and hand-colouring of the original are kept, not corrected. Unframed. Shipped rolled in a tube.

Provenance
John James Audubon (1785–1851), American Flamingo; Greater Flamingo, Plate CCCCXXXI from The Birds of America, London 1827–1838; hand-coloured aquatint engraving after the watercolour of 1838, engraved, printed and coloured by Robert Havell Jr., sheet 97.2 × 65.1 cm / 38.25 × 25.625 in.
The work is in the public domain worldwide; the museum publishes its digitisation under the rights statement “No Copyright – United States”.

Where this comes from
The museum file, the measurements, and what we are allowed to sell: the record for this sheet.

Further reading
Why This Print Is Not Bigger