An opportunity to inspect even one of the gargantuan pages of Audubon's Birds of America shouldn't be missed

In November 2023, shortly after taking up the position of Heritage Lead at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, Claire McDade, a woman who positively thrums with all the compact energy and bright-eyed good cheer of a goldfinch on a sunny spring morning, removed the dust sheet that for the previous 30-odd years had covered a waist-high cabinet, about the size of a foosball table or perhaps a little larger, in a corner of the college’s upstairs library. What lay beneath left her speechless. A first edition of the first volume of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. ‘I hate to use the word, but, honestly, I was,’ she told me, ‘gobsmacked. I thought, “We’ve got to do something more with this.” I made it my mission.’

By May 2026, with necessary funding secured and conservation work done, her mission was accomplished. As of this week, the college’s Audubon is, for a few precious hours every Monday, available for public inspection.

The Birds of America was published in instalments between 1827 and 1838, and comprises 435 hand-coloured etched plates with line-engraving and aquatint of 1,065 birds of some 489 North American species. Audubon’s crisp, hallucinogenically vivid images are presented on ‘double-elephant folio’ pages, measuring approximately 40in by 30in, the largest sheets then commercially available.

The format allowed Audubon to represent gangly or ‘spready’ birds such as eagles, owls, herons and cranes (in contorted though never entirely unnatural poses), as well as their smaller cousins, at life size, together with something of their natural habitat and prey or predators. Occasionally he would expand the perspective further still, as with his astonishing plate of the golden eagle, which also includes, in the mountainous, snow-capped background, a self-portrait of the artist, inching across a fallen tree that bridges a precipitous ravine, with a specimen of another such eagle slung across his back.

Of the 200 or so original sets of The Birds of America, 120 are thought to survive, three and a half of them in Glasgow. The Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians, which holds just two of four volumes’ worth, accounts for the ‘and a half’. Which, by the way, is nothing to sniff at. In 2010, a complete set was sold by Sotheby’s for £7.3 million, making it, at that time, the most expensive book ever sold.

What strikes you, up close, is the astonishing directness of the image-making. The classical clarity of line, enhanced by the free use of vibrant colour and carefully managed shadow, generally reduced to a bare minimum; the oddly dynamic contrast between busy positive space and blank white negative space; above all the compelling impression of authentic, painstakingly observed life, of animated being, of action, appetite, character and temperament. These are birds that hop and squawk and peck and bite; birds that quiver anxiously or cavort carelessly; sterner birds that meet your gaze and stare back evenly, that warn you to move on if you know what’s good for you.

Audubon’s observation of birds’ appearance and behaviour was meticulous, the result of countless thousands of hours in the field. His love of birds was profound, obsessive. It’s also true that he lived at a time when none of the birds he represented were endangered. On the contrary, they existed in almost unimaginable profusion. (At least five of the species included in The Birds of America are now extinct.) And we must accept, however uneasily, that his ability to represent those same species depended on his willingness — indeed, his enthusiasm — not only to hunt and kill them, but also to bend and break and otherwise manipulate their fine-boned bodies after death, with the icy-calm discrimination of a Vogue art director, for maximum aesthetic effect as models for his paintings. Look into Audubon’s use of wire in taxidermy at your leisure, if you dare. He referred to it as ‘skewering’. In this respect, too, he was a great innovator. Shrike a pose.

The texts that accompany the exhibition address these and other similarly awkward points briefly, but directly.

Attentive visitors will also notice the little display by the entrance to the upstairs library that serves as a kind of prelude, pointing out, among other things, that Audubon was the only ornithologist mentioned by name in Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, and drawing attention to the connection — fraught, to say the least — between Audubon and Alexander Wilson, a Scottish ornithologist who had, a decade or so earlier, embarked on a project similar to Audubon’s.

Audubon was a difficult, troubled character. Shunned in America, where he’d alienated those best placed to assist him, he was obliged to look to Europe and Britain for support for the Birds of America project. He also needed printers who were up to the task. His extended visit to Scotland, England and France in 1826-9 yielded the results he hoped for. Both Charles X and George IV were transfixed by the samples he presented and, crucially, became advance subscribers. Although Audubon came to regret his choice of an Edinburgh publisher, William H Lizars, he quickly identified another one in London, Robert Havell and Robert Havell Jr, to complete the project.

That a set, or even half a set, of The Birds of America should wind up in the collection of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow is less surprising than it might seem in our highly specialised times. As McDade explained: ‘Glasgow played a significant role in the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th and early 19th centuries, a period when medicine, science and the study of the natural world were closely connected. Audubon’s work is a perfect bridge between science and the Arts.’

Though a modest financial success, The Birds of America didn’t make Audubon rich. Nor is it, from a scientific perspective, without flaws. But nothing quite like it had been attempted before or has been attempted since. An opportunity to inspect even a single one of its gargantuan pages shouldn’t be missed. Afterwards, go outside, listen for birdsong, look to the skies, and give thanks.

Audubon’s Birds of America is available to view on Mondays from 2pm to 5pm at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 232-42 St Vincent Street, Glasgow G2 5RJ . Entry is free, but visitors are advised to email library@rcpsg.ac.uk in advance.