{"product_id":"john_james_audubon__virginian_partridge","title":"Virginian Partridge – John James Audubon, 1827","description":"\u003ch2\u003eVirginian Partridge by John James Audubon, 1827\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003ch3\u003eFramed Canvas Art\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis plate from Audubon's monumental \u003cem\u003eBirds of America\u003c\/em\u003e depicts the \u003cstrong\u003eNorthern Bobwhite (Virginian Partridge)\u003c\/strong\u003e in a scene of sudden, violent drama: a \u003cstrong\u003eRed-shouldered Hawk\u003c\/strong\u003e descends with talons extended into a covey of bobwhites scattering in every direction across a low, rocky hillside. Audubon populated the composition with an unusually large number of birds, filling the sheet from foreground to midground with the mottled rufous, buff, black and white plumage of the quail, each individual rendered with precise feather-by-feather detail. The hawk's \u003cstrong\u003edark brown and russet barred wings\u003c\/strong\u003e, spread to their full span, anchor the upper half of the plate, while the pale undersides and white-speckled throats of the fleeing birds animate the lower register. A subdued blue-gray mountain range recedes into the distance, and the foreground ground plane is worked in ochre, tan and dull green grasses. The light is cool and diffuse, consistent with Audubon's characteristic plate approach: every specimen is fully illuminated, shadowless almost, so that no diagnostic detail is lost. The result is a composition that reads simultaneously as scientific record and as a charged, kinetic narrative of predator and prey.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAudubon began serious work on \u003cem\u003eBirds of America\u003c\/em\u003e in the early 1820s, and Plate 76, \u003cstrong\u003eVirginian Partridge\u003c\/strong\u003e, was engraved and published in London by Robert Havell Jr. around 1827 to 1830 as part of the double-elephant folio, one of the largest and most ambitious publishing projects of the 19th century. By that period Audubon had adopted the practice of posing freshly collected specimens with wire armatures, allowing him to arrange multiple birds in life-like attitudes that conventional naturalist illustration had never attempted. The Northern Bobwhite was among the most familiar game birds of the American South and East, and its inclusion in the folio carried both scientific and cultural weight: it was a bird every subscriber would recognise, shown here in circumstances every sportsman and farmer would understand. The \u003cem\u003eBirds of America\u003c\/em\u003e plates belong to the \u003cem\u003eNatural History Illustration\u003c\/em\u003e tradition in their function, yet Audubon pushed the genre toward something closer to dramatic storytelling, and this plate stands as one of his most overtly action-driven compositions. The folio is now held in major collections including the National Audubon Society, the New-York Historical Society, and the Smithsonian, and complete sets have sold at auction for record sums in the tens of millions of dollars.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Canvas Classics archival giclee process on museum-grade cotton canvas is particularly well suited to a plate of this complexity. The subtle gradations between the \u003cstrong\u003ewarm rufous tones of the hawk's barred breast\u003c\/strong\u003e and the cooler ochres of the ground, and the fine articulation of individual feather shafts on the quail's flanks, are preserved at a fidelity that offset lithography and poster-grade inkjet reproduction cannot approach. Our source material is drawn from high-resolution museum scans, digitally restored to recover the original color accuracy of the hand-finished Havell engraving: the chalky whites of the bobwhite throats, the slate-blue of the distant hills, and the full tonal range from the deep brown of the hawk's mantle down to the pale buff of the ground grasses are all rendered faithfully. The ornate composite frame, available in a warm Gold finish, completes the presentation with a gallery-quality surround worthy of one of the defining works of American natural history art.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canvas Classics","offers":[{"title":"Small \/ Gold \/ Classic","offer_id":68136878211307,"sku":"2621011","price":195.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Small \/ Silver \/ Classic","offer_id":68136878244075,"sku":"2621012","price":195.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Small \/ Charcoal \/ Classic","offer_id":68136878276843,"sku":"2621013","price":195.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Small \/ Gold \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878309611,"sku":"262101R1","price":195.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Small \/ Silver \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878342379,"sku":"262101R2","price":195.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Small \/ Charcoal \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878375147,"sku":"262101R3","price":195.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Small \/ Gloss Black \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878407915,"sku":"262101R4","price":195.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Small \/ Gloss White \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878440683,"sku":"262101R5","price":195.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Medium \/ Gold \/ Classic","offer_id":68136878473451,"sku":"2621021","price":295.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Medium \/ Silver \/ Classic","offer_id":68136878506219,"sku":"2621022","price":295.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Medium \/ Charcoal \/ Classic","offer_id":68136878538987,"sku":"2621023","price":295.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Medium \/ Gold \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878571755,"sku":"262102R1","price":295.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Medium \/ Silver \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878604523,"sku":"262102R2","price":295.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Medium \/ Charcoal \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878637291,"sku":"262102R3","price":295.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Medium \/ Gloss Black \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878670059,"sku":"262102R4","price":295.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Medium \/ Gloss White \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878702827,"sku":"262102R5","price":295.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Large \/ Gold \/ Classic","offer_id":68136878735595,"sku":"2621031","price":495.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Large \/ Silver \/ Classic","offer_id":68136878768363,"sku":"2621032","price":495.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Large \/ Charcoal \/ Classic","offer_id":68136878801131,"sku":"2621033","price":495.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Large \/ Gold \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878833899,"sku":"262103R1","price":495.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Large \/ Silver \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878866667,"sku":"262103R2","price":495.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Large \/ Charcoal \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878899435,"sku":"262103R3","price":495.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Large \/ Gloss Black \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878932203,"sku":"262103R4","price":495.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Large \/ Gloss White \/ Regency","offer_id":68136878964971,"sku":"262103R5","price":495.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Estate \/ Gold \/ Classic","offer_id":68136878997739,"sku":"2621041","price":995.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Estate \/ Silver \/ Classic","offer_id":68136879030507,"sku":"2621042","price":995.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Estate \/ Charcoal \/ Classic","offer_id":68136879063275,"sku":"2621043","price":995.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Estate \/ Gold \/ Regency","offer_id":68136879096043,"sku":"262104R1","price":995.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Estate \/ Silver \/ Regency","offer_id":68136879128811,"sku":"262104R2","price":995.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Estate \/ Charcoal \/ Regency","offer_id":68136879161579,"sku":"262104R3","price":995.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Estate \/ Gloss Black \/ Regency","offer_id":68136879194347,"sku":"262104R4","price":995.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Estate \/ Gloss White \/ Regency","offer_id":68136879227115,"sku":"262104R5","price":995.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0762\/8606\/6923\/files\/john_james_audubon__virginian_partridge__estate__dark_bronze.jpg?v=1792367070","url":"https:\/\/canvasclassics.shop\/products\/john_james_audubon__virginian_partridge","provider":"Canvas Classics","version":"1.0","type":"link"}