Raven

The plate was first published in The Birds of America, Audubon's monumental folio series issued in parts between 1827 and 1838, with the accompanying text in Ornithological Biography completed in Edinburgh. By the time the Raven plate appeared, Audubon had already secured his reputation among European and American subscribers as the most ambitious ornithological illustrator of the 19th century. The work belongs to the tradition of Natural History Illustration, building on the plate conventions of Mark Catesby and George Edwards but exceeding them in scale: the double-elephant folio format allowed Audubon to render most species at life size. The raven, the largest passerine in North America, suited that format particularly well, and Audubon used the bird's scale to demonstrate his command of structural anatomy alongside the textural differentiation of feather groups. The plate was engraved and hand-colored by Robert Havell Jr. in London, and original folio copies have been held by institutions including the New-York Historical Society and the National Audubon Society.