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Audubon’s Elephant by Duff Hart-Davis, Henry Holt, $27.50, ISBN 0805075682 Reviewed by Roy Herbert

A STRANGE and striking figure arrived in Liverpool in 1826. Tall backwoodsman John James Audubon was reversing the usual traffic in search of a transatlantic fortune. A self-taught artist, he had a majestic ambition: to complete his paintings, life-size, of American birds – and to make some money.

Born in Haiti, Audubon had been brought up in the American West, wandering through the wilderness and observing its wildlife. In the UK he hoped to find skilled engravers and colourists to reproduce his paintings and to sell them as a series to subscribers. His only assets, apart from the stunning images on huge sheets of paper known as double-elephant size, were letters of introduction to the Rathbones, a prominent family in Liverpool.

Duff Hart-Davis vividly evokes the cultural state of the UK at the time, in which these assets were eventually enough – combined with Audubon’s phenomenal energy and perseverance – to ensure success. After years of disappointment, controversy and aching separation from his family, the sheer beauty and truth of his pictures led to reasonable affluence, fame and the honour of election to the Royal Society. Today, the impact of his paintings is as strong as ever and his Birds of America has never been out of print, in editions of many formats.

Hart-Davis’s admiration for his subject ensures that Audubon walks his pages full of blood, love and endurance, making for rare enjoyment. There are, of course, plates that reveal Audubon’s elegance and genius at his art.