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Audubon's painting of the bald eagle, with goose and without



In Audubon's Birds of America, the illustration of the Bald Eagle shows the
bird with one foot holding down a big catfish on a rocky shore. (On the web,
see it at http://employeeweb.myxa.com/rrb/Audubon/VolI/00021.html  )What's
interesting is that the prey item changed between the time Audubon first
painted his water color of the eagle and an artisan later engraved the plate
from which the eagle print was pulled. I'm going out on a limb here, but I
seem to remember that in the original painting Audubon showed the eagle with
a dead goose. 

I saw the eagle painting side by side with the eagle plate in an exhibit at
the National Gallery in Washington about five years ago. There was no
explanation of why the eagle's prey was changed. Just a guess -- maybe to
save time for the engravers engaged in what was an enormously expensive
project? (The paintings are owned by the New York Historical Society.)

Ginger_Travis@unc.edu
Chapel Hill, NC