Only 119 complete copies of The Birds of America are known to exist A rare copy of John James Audubon’s Birds of America, billed as the world’s most expensive book. Only 119 complete copies of the 19th-century book are known to exist, and 108 are owned by museums and libraries. A separate edition of the wildlife book sold for a record-breaking price of $8.8m (£5.7m) a decade ago. It contains 1,000 life-sized illustrations of almost 500 breeds. It took wildlife artist John James Audubon 12 years to complete his study. He did so by travelling across America, shooting the birds. He would then hang them on bits of wire to paint them.
The artist then went to Britain to print the volumes and targeted the rich to buy copies. The four-volume set of folios measures almost a metre in height and depicts life-size illustrations of all the known species of North American birds from the early 19th century. Six of those species have since become extinct, including the passenger pigeon, Labrador duck and Carolina parakeet. Four, including the California condor, are endangered. Audubon was born in 1785 in what is now Haiti.
He grew up in France, where he studied birds as a child, and moved to the United States in 1803, eventually settling in Kentucky. He spent decades collecting specimens to illustrate what would eventually become the greatest achievement of ornithological art in existence. Audubon, who had no formal training as an artist, is seen as the father of ornithology in the Americas. Ted Cheskey, manager of bird conservation programs at Nature Canada, said that before this book, bird lovers would shoot birds and stuff them to “observe” them.
He worked closely with Robert Havell, an accomplished engraver, to produce the images. He hung the birds from the ceiling in order to paint each specimen in greater detail. Vivid colour, graceful lines, from the neck of a swan to the wing span of a hawk, distinguish the watercolour works. The birds are depicted in their natural habitats, alone or in large groups, and drawn in an anthropomorphic style, sporting expressions of ferocity or consternation. If $10 million is too steep for you, the hardcover of Audubon’s Birds of America is available on Amazon for $89.79