A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House (The Hill Collection: Holdings of the LSU Libraries)

Over the summer of 1821, a cash-strapped John James Audubon worked as a tutor at Oakley Plantation in Louisiana’s rural West Feliciana Parish. This move initiated a profound change in direction for the struggling artist. Oakley’s woods teemed with life, galvanizing Audubon to undertake one of the most extraordinary endeavors in the annals of art: a comprehensive pictorial record of America’s birds. That summer, Audubon began what would eventually become his four-volume opus, Birds of America. In A Summer of Birds, Danny Heitman recounts the season that shaped Audubon’s destiny, sorting facts from romance to give an intimate view of the world’s most famous bird artist. A new preface marks the two-hundredth anniversary of that eventful interlude, reflecting on Audubon’s enduring legacy among artists, aesthetes, and nature lovers in Louisiana and around the world.

• | Author: Danny Heitman
• | Publisher: LSU Press
• | Publication Date: February 05, 2020
• | Number of Pages: 152 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 0807172936
• | ISBN-13: 9780807172933