First edition, first printing, in three volumes, of the finest animal prints published in America to this day. In about 1840, Audubon wrote to his collaborator, the Rev. James Bachman, “I am growing old, but what of this? My spirits are as enthusiastical as ever, my legs full able to carry my body for ten years to come, and in about two of these I expect the illustrations out, and ere the following twelve months have elapsed, their histories studied, their descriptions carefully prepared and the book printed! Only think of the quadrupeds of America being presented to the World of Science by Audubon and Bachman” (Streshinsky).
Unlike its predecessor and companion volumes, the ‘Birds of America’, Audubon’s ‘Viviparous Quadrupeds’ was produced entirely in the United States, making it the “largest successful color plate book project of 19th-century America” (Reese). The plates were first published in 30 parts of 5 plates each and three separately published accompanying text volumes, written by John Bachman, appeared between 1846–1854. Audubon managed to complete seventy-seven drawings before failing health kept him from his work. The remainder were completed by his son, John Woodhouse Audubon.

Audubon’s “Great Western Journey”
After an unsuccessful attempt to secure federal funding for his “Great Western Journey”, across the Rockies to the Great Plains, in pursuit of the mammals that were to be the subject of his “alterum opus”, John James Audubon (1785-1851), determined that the commercial potential of the Quadrupeds was worth the risk to fund the expedition himself: “To render [the Quadrupeds] more complete, I will leave the comforts of my home and beloved family, bound to the Rocky Mountains... I cannot tell how long I may be absent, but look to return loaded up with knowledge, new and abundant specimens on the shot and not from stuffed museums’ moth-eaten remains. I am told that I am too old to undertake such a long and arduous journey, but I reply that having the will, I will no doubt safely bear or even surmount the difficulties” (letter to C. Bonaparte, Feb. 1843).
So, when he was 58, Audubon left the relative comforts of St. Louis to travel a thousand miles along the Missouri, in April of 1843. Luckily, he was accompanied by the naturalist Edward Harris, a party of trappers, and several native Americans. The trappers’ knowledge of local fauna was limited to those with,… saleable fur, but the native Americans were more satisfactorily responsive to Audubon, and were so impressed by his specimen lithograph of a woodchuck, that they ran away, claiming they were alive.
The prairie was teaming with large wildlife, and provided Audubon with an abundance subject-matter: elk, deer, bear, wolves, and buffalo. However, by the time he returned from his quest, Audubon’s health was in serious decline, and so many of the smaller mammals were drawn by his son, John Woodhouse, and the backgrounds by Victor Gifford, who also oversaw the printing and publication. Nevertheless, it took five years to publish all 150 plates.
Although the enterprise was a runaway commercial success, largely due to Audubon’s other son, Victor’s, careful management, and some three hundred subscriptions, by 1860, the “Audubon family faced total financial ruin. The Roe Lockwood company, publisher of the [subsequent] Bien edition, was their major creditor. All events after the downfall strongly indicate that Roe Lockwood gained the copyrights to all of Audubon’s images as part of the Audubon’s bankruptcy settlement. In 1861, the family sold its remaining copies of the Double Elephant Folio [of “The Birds of America”], the Imperial Folio Quadrupeds, and several of its copies of John Gould’s books. Lucy [Audubon’s wife] was forced to sell Audubon’s original watercolour paintings for the Birds to the New-York Historical Society in 1863. She even had to sell the family’s New York mansion, Minnie’s Land, that same year” (Steiner).

The artist
John James Audubon (1785-1851) was born in Saint Domingue (now Haiti), the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and sugar plantation owner. “The identity of his mother is in dispute; she could have been a French chambermaid named Jeanne Rabine, but there is compelling evidence that she was a mixed-race housekeeper named Catherine “Sanitte” Bouffard. At the age of 5—which coincided with the beginnings of the Haitian Revolution—Audubon was sent to Nantes, France and was raised by his father’s wife, Anne. There, John James Audubon took an interest in birds, nature, drawing, and music.
“In 1803, at the age of 18, he was sent to America, in part to escape conscription into Emperor Napoleon’s army. He lived on the family-owned estate at Mill Grove, near Philadelphia, where he hunted, studied and drew birds, and met his wife, Lucy Bakewell. While there, he conducted the first known bird-banding experiment in North America, tying strings around the legs of Eastern Phoebes; he learned that the birds returned to the very same nesting sites each year.
“Audubon spent more than a decade as a businessman, traveling down the Ohio River to western Kentucky—then the frontier—and setting up a dry-goods store in Henderson. He continued to draw birds as a hobby, amassing an impressive portfolio. He also bought and sold enslaved people during this time to support his venture. Audubon was successful in business for a while, but hard times hit, and in 1819 he was briefly jailed for bankruptcy. With no other prospects, in the early 1820s Audubon set off to depict America’s avifauna, with nothing but his gun, artist’s materials, and a young assistant” (The Audubon Society online)... and the rest is history.