Common Gannet (Sula bassana, Lacep.), Volume 4, Plate 326

Audubon began painting the Gannet on June 22, 1833. He spent the next day working on the background, one of his most ambitious in Birds of America.

The plate features an adult gannet behind, and partially obscured by, a young bird. In the background, Audubon included a view of the 300–foot Gannet Rock, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, swarming with birds departing from, or landing at, their breeding grounds. Audubon observed the habits of the gannet carefully, appreciating how it dove into the sea from a height of about 100 feet. Thanks to its specially reinforced skull, the bird was able to hit the sea, like a lance, causing sprays of up to 15 feet. The birds’ parenting habits—from the individualized landing calls to the nest lined with seaweed to their habit of feeding their young until they were fully grown—fascinated him, and it is perhaps no coincidence that his plate shows a father nestling up to his son—perhaps a reflection, too, of Audubon’s affection for his son John Woodhouse, who had accompanied him on the Labrador voyage. The adult bird’s orange–buff neck and head, a loud, joyous color, add luminousness to the otherwise restrained colors of the image. If the adult let Havell showcase the possibilities of aquatint engraving, the speckled plumage of the young bird in the foreground enabled Audubon to demonstrate his marvelous eye for detail. “Each feather,” he noted proudly in his journal, “is divided in its contour from the next.” As the viewer’s eye travels to the rock in the distance, another narrative emerges, not one about youth and maturity, but about the difference between the one (or, rather, the two) and the many, between the two unique individuals close to us and the distant, indistinguishable mass of birds that live on Gannet Rock.

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

On the morning of the 14th of June 1833, the white sails of the Ripley were spread before a propitious breeze, and onward she might be seen gaily wending her way toward the shores of Labrador. We had well explored the Magdalene Islands, and were anxious to visit the Great Gannet Rock, where, according to our pilot, the birds from which it derives its name bred. For several days I had observed numerous files proceeding northward, and marked their mode of flight while thus travelling. As our bark dashed through the heaving billows, my anxiety to reach the desired spot increased. At length, about ten o’clock, we discerned at a distance a white speck, which our pilot assured us was the celebrated rock of our wishes. After a while I could distinctly see its top from the deck, and thought that it was still covered with snow several feet deep. As we approached it, I imagined that the atmosphere around was filled with flakes, but on my turning to the pilot, who smiled at my simplicity, I was assured that nothing was in sight but the Gannets and their island home. I rubbed my eyes, took up my glass, and saw that the strange dimness of the air before us was caused by the innumerable birds, whose white bodies and black–tipped pinions produced a blended tint of light grey. When we had advanced to within half a mile, this magnificent veil of floating Gannets was easily seen, now shooting upwards, as if intent on reaching the sky, then descending as if to join the feathered masses below, and again diverging toward either side and sweeping over the surface of the ocean. The Ripley now partially furled her sails, and lay to, when all on board were eager to scale the abrupt sides of the mountain isle, and satisfy their curiosity.