Artist in the background

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We all need lofty goals. They give our lives purpose.
 
In 1819, John James Audubon set a doozy of a goal for himself: to find and draw all of the bird species that lived in America...
 

At the time, no one knew how many avian species lived in this country. Audubon set out to find out but he didn’t stop with merely drawing them. He wanted to illustrate all the birds “life size.” That’s no problem with a diminutive hummingbird but whooping cranes are whoppers, roughly five feet tall...

Early in his travels Audubon asked his young protégé Joseph Mason to go along as his traveling companion. Precocious, “big for his age” and brimming with talent, for two years Mason was at Audubon’s side sketching plants and flowers that would ultimately become backgrounds to Audubon's birds...

For the rest of my article about Joseph Mason look the November/December issue of The Tennessee Conservationist. 


Special thanks to editor, Louise Zepp.
 
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