The Audubon Magazine. 



Vol. I. 



JANUARY, i! 



No. 12. 



AUDUBONIAN SKETCHES. 



IT may be remembered by those who 

 read The Auk for October (1886), 

 that the writer pubhshed therein a paper 

 entitled " On an old portrait of Audubon, 

 painted by himself, and a word about some 

 of his early drawings." A frontispiece il- 

 lustrated that number, being a reduced 

 portrait of Audubon, the original of which 

 he had painted himself, which original came 

 temporarily into my possession at Fort Win- 

 gate, New Mexico, where I had had a pho- 

 tograph made of it, and subsequently elec- 

 trotyped the latter. 



The article in The Aukiully explains the 

 way by which it came about that such a 

 rare privilege was extended to me, with 

 other matters relating thereto. Now the 

 present circulation of The Auk is not as 

 great as it will surely come to be some day, 

 and as no doubt many widely separated 

 members of the Audubon Society never 

 saw the portrait of our great ornithologist 

 referred to above, the thought struck me, 

 that it would contribute to their pleasure to 

 republish this picture in The Audubon 

 Magazine. This, as you see, with the ready 

 assent of Dr. Grinnell, I have done for you. 



The good people who loaned me this 

 original portrait of Audubon, also present- 

 ed me with three of his original boy-draw- 

 ings; these are still in my possession, and I 

 have had them one and all photographed 

 for publication in the present connection. 



In describing this old portrait and these 

 three drawings in The Auk I said : " It will 

 be remembered by those conversant with 

 the life of Audubon, that sometime during 

 his youth he spent a year or more with his 

 parents at Nantes, France. His wife tells 

 us in his biography, that while at Nantes, 

 this famous young devotee of nature made 

 a hundred drawings of European birds. 

 These were brought back by him in his 

 portfolio on his return to America, and it 

 proves to be three of these juvenile efforts 

 that I now have in my possession. Rare 

 old treasures they are to be sure, and would 

 that I could commit to paper the quickly- 

 passing thoughts they inspire in my mind, 

 as I hold them up one at a time before me ! 



" They cause us to wonder whether Audu- 

 bon really dreamed, as he worked away over 

 these crude productions, of the man he 

 was to be some day. And we wonder, too, 

 as we examine them, at the rapidity of his 

 artistic development and improvement. 



" They are each and all drawn by a com- 

 bination of crayon and water-colors upon 

 a thin and not expensive kind of drawing- 

 paper, now brittle and soiled by age. Au- 

 dubon had evidently numbered these draw- 

 ings of his, and these numbers are 44, 77, 

 and 96, a European magpie, a coot, and a 

 green woodpecker, respectively. 



"As I have said, the earliest of these 

 drawings is the one of the magpie, and let 



