Audubon and Other Famous Nature Artists on Display at North Carolina Aquarium

By C.P. "Buster" Nunemaker, III 

Manteo, NC - Beautiful birds, amusing animals, fanciful fishes and natural curiosities await you in “The Art of Science, Illustrations of the Natural World: 1750-1900” at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. This unique collection of antique etchings and lithographs, provided by Seaside Art Gallery, will be on display at the Aquarium July through September 2009. Featured are works by America’s foremost bird illustrator John James Audubon whose work is still a standard against which bird artists are measured. These are hand colored stone lithographs, based on his seminal work Birds of America. The show includes naturalist art by other American and European artists. The art is available for purchase directly through Seaside Art Gallery, 252-441-5418.

The period 1750–1900 was marked by great leaps in knowledge and stunning technological advances. It encompassed the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the climax of European imperialism. It was the age of Franklin and Priestley, Jenner and Pasteur, Linnaeus and Darwin, Watt and Edison, Tesla and the Curies.

The seeds of rational inquiry planted during the Renaissance blossomed into modern science, medicine, and technology. Geology, genetics, linguistics, physics, psychology, and other disciplines took shape. Navigation, cartography, agriculture, and forestry became more science than art. A brief account of invention in this 150-year span—which gave the world railroads, the steamboat, the automobile, the chronometer, the telegraph, the telephone, the electric generator, petroleum distillation, for example—would fill an encyclopedia, another legacy of the period. 

The new branches of learning were inundated with information about the natural world from university laboratories and from all parts of the world. Global travel and trade brought to light countless plants, animals, landforms, waters, and phenomena to be studied

At length the pursuit of knowledge and the appreciation of nature came to be widely regarded as worthy in themselves. Scholars turned to direct observation of plants and animals for natural history and many began to accumulate large collections of exotic specimens. Artists would document them by creating watercolors, drawings, etchings and lithographs. The finer detail of the printing processes allowed artists to depict minute aspects of the subject. Many publications continued to use illustrators even after the incorporation of photography. It would be many years before color printing would equal illustrators’ plates. Illustrations produced in the 18th and 19th century are regarded as both appealing and scientifically valid. Today scientific illustrators bridge art and science, by picking out detail and omitting the irrelevant, to make the image convey the essential attributes of the subject.

The Aquarium is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission is $8 for adults, $7 for ages 62 and over and $6 for ages 6-17. Children 5 and under and North Carolina Aquarium Society members are admitted free. This art exhibition is included in Aquarium admission. Visit www.ncaquariums.com or call 252-473-3494 for more information.

PHOTO: Step back in time and see the natural world through the eyes of John James Audubon and artists of the period. “Ferruginous Mockingbird” by Audubon is an example of early naturalist illustration on display at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island through September.

To view North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island's web page on Zoo and Aquarium Visitor, go to:http://www.zandavisitor.com/forumtopicdetail-2025-North_Carolina_Aquarium_on_Roanoke_Island