American Flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber, Linn.), Volume 4, Plate 431
After several unsuccessful attempts to shoot flamingos or obtains specimens from friends (“When will the flamingos come???” he plaintively asked Bachman in December 1837), he obtained suitable skins from Cuba and made this painting in London in the summer of 1838.
The flamingo is a large bird—five feet tall—a fact that would not have been lost on Audubon, who himself was a tall man, by the standards of his time: five feet ten, as he himself claimed. Audubon’s desire was to portray all his birds life–sized, but the flamingo is so big that he had to portray him bending over so that it would fit the double elephant folio size. Ironically, the Audubon plate most sought after and celebrated today is based on a painting made entirely from skins (and the distant memory of personal observation). The background of Audubon’s original watercolor was white. The finished plate shows Havell—who had likely never seen a live flamingo—giving free rein to his imagination, adding flamingo after flamingo, the landscape receding into the distance where, far away, the island of Audubon’s birth might be beckoning. Audubon’s essay on the flamingo is one protracted lament that he was never able to procure a specimen for his collection; one wonders if the affinity he felt with that bird came from long–buried memories of seeing flamingos on Saint–Domingue when he was child.
From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography
On the 7th of May, 1832, while sailing from Indian Key, one of the numerous islets that skirt the south–eastern coast of the Peninsula of Florida, I for the first time saw a flock of Flamingoes. … The sun, now far advanced toward the horizon, still shone with full splendour, the ocean around glittered in its quiet beauty, and the light fleecy clouds that here and there spotted the heavens, seemed flakes of snow margined with gold. Our bark was propelled almost as if by magic, for scarcely was a ripple raised by her bows as we moved in silence. Far away to seaward we spied a flock of Flamingoes advancing in “Indian line,” with well–spread wings, outstretched necks, and long legs directed backwards. Ah! Reader, could you but know the emotions that then agitated my breast! I thought I had now reached the height of all my expectations, for my voyage to the Floridas was undertaken in a great measure for the purpose of studying these lovely birds in their own beautiful islands. I followed them with my eyes, watching as it were every beat of their wings; and as they were rapidly advancing towards us, Captain DAY, who was aware of my anxiety to procure some, had every man stowed away out of sight and our gunners in readiness. … The birds were now, as I thought, within a hundred and fifty yards; when suddenly, to our extreme disappointment, their chief veered away, and was of course followed by the rest.