174 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



strenuously, and I thought I had improved by apply- 

 ing coats of water-color under the pastels, thereby pre- 

 venting the appearance of the paper, that in some in- 

 stances marred my best productions. I discovered also 

 many imperfections in my earlier drawings, and formed 

 the resolution to redraw the whole of them." Seldom 

 satisfied with the results attained, he kept up this labori- 

 ous process of revision and selection by which he ap- 

 proached more closely to his ideal, the truth of living na- 

 ture, for more than forty years, until, in fact, the last 

 plates of his Birds of America came from the press in 

 England in 1838. An examination of the originals of 

 those plates today * proves that many of their defects 

 were inevitably caused by the makeshifts to which he 

 was sometimes forced by lack of time. 



Audubon has credited his father with the only judi- 

 cious criticism which he ever received at the youthful 

 stage of his art. "He was so kind to me," said the son, 

 "that to have listened lightly to his words would have 

 been highly ungrateful. I listened less to others and 

 more to him, and his words became my law." When he 

 was about seventeen years old, or probably not far 

 from the year 1802, 2 he was sent to Paris to study draw- 

 ing under Jacques Louis David, the acknowledged 

 leader of French art during the period of the Revolu- 

 tion. This popular artist, who had uttered fierce invec- 

 tives against "the last five despots of France," became 

 nevertheless court painter under Napoleon; like 

 many another Conventional regicide, he was destined 



1 See Vol. I, p. 185. 



a Cuvier stated in his report on Audubon's Birds, delivered at the 

 Academy of Sciences, Paris, September 22, 1828, that the author had been 

 twenty-five years before a pupil in the school of David. This would 

 place the date in 1803, but earlier than the autumn of that year, when 

 Audubon started for America. See Note, Vol. I, p. 99. 



