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Audubon Plate # 26, Carolina Parrot  $450 

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Print size: 26 1/4" x 39 1/4"; image size: 23 1/2" x 32"

 

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This print is based on a painting composed in Louisiana about 1825 and inscribed at the lower right:  "The upper Specimen was shot near Bayou Sarah and appeared so uncommon having 14 Tail feathers all 7 sizes distinct and firmly affixed in 14 different receptacles that I drew it more to verify one of those astonishing fits of Nature than any thing else-it was a female-The Green headed [a young bird] is also a singular although not so uncommon a Variety as the above one-Louisiana-December-J.J. Audubon."

Audubon wrote of these parakeets, "The woods are the habitation best fitted for them, and there the richness of their plumage, their beautiful mode of flight, and even their screams, afford welcome intimation that our darkest forests and most sequestered swamps are not destitute of charms."  In later years he was to write:   "Our Parakeets are rapidly diminishing in number, and in some districts, where twenty-five years ago they were plentiful, scarcely any are now to be seen."

This gorgeous bird is now extinct.  And little wonder.  Its plumage could be sold for millinery, and it was prized as a cage bird both here and abroad.  To make matters worse, since it was considered excellent eating and was destructive to a variety of cultivated crops, it was relentlessly destroyed by man. 

Princeton Audubon prints are far beyond mere reproductions. Princeton (formerly Princeton Polychrome Press) earned an enviable nationwide reputation by reproducing fine art prints for, among others, The National Gallery of Art, National Portrait Gallery, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The New-York Historical Society, and The Detroit Institute of Arts.  The finest reproductions of Picasso and Andrew Wyeth works were done by Princeton.  Princeton double elephant prints, the same size as life, are also exceptional works of fine art and were produced by the same Master Printer, the late David O. Johnson of Princeton New Jersey, who was also one of the world's foremost collectors of the antique Audubon originals.  Princetons are thus the real deal in Audubon fine art, the world's only direct-camera Audubon facsimiles.

Chris Lane of the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW: "...of all the full-size facsimiles of Audubon's prints, those from Princeton Audubon Limited come the closest in appearance and quality to the originals.  Combining this with their very reasonable cost make the Princeton Audubon facsimiles winners for those looking to acquire some of the most dramatic American natural history images ever produced."