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Unframed limited edition Audubon fine art, as seen in The New York Times. The real deal in Audubon art! Share
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A Princeton Special Collection
John James Audubon's Ten Best
Its not easy choosing the best of Audubon's work.  We purchased originals of the exquisite images showcased below in order to re-create them for you, and we feel this is the finest collection of Audubon facsimiles ever offered for sale.  Of course, it is not just the beauty of the images, but the unmatched quality of the prints themselves.  Each Princeton double elephant print shown here comes with a Certificate of Authenticity, along with the edition number penciled into the lower left-hand corner, just under Audubon's "Drawn from nature."  The official Princeton seal is embossed in the lower right-hand corner. This collection will never cease to delight the Audubon print collector.  Thank you for your interest in Audubon's Ten Best.

All ten for $3,500  (Over $5,000 if purchased seperately)
Each print measures approximately 26 1/4 x 39 1/4.

Click for expanded images.  Questions?  Call us at 908-510-1621

Audubon Brown Pelican. The brown pelican is a ponderous bird, but with its six-and-one-half-food wingspread has a powerful flight which it alternates with short glides. The bird carries a large pouch under its lower bill and has an appetite for fish as large as the pouch. American children learn of the brown pelican through a well known bit of doggerel that begins: "What a wonderful bird is the pelican-Its beak can hold more than its belly can,..." Audubon Snowy Owl. The breeding ground of the magnificent snowy owl lies across northern Alaska and Canada, where the lemming is its staple food, supplemented by ptarmigan, fish and hare. A persistent hunter, it spends much time on lookouts such as banks, boulders, knolls, and dunes along the sea. Periodic epidemics decimate the lemmings and seem to account for the bird's southward flight, which gives Stateside birders a chance to see this large, white inhabitant of the tundra. Audubon Carolina Parrot. Audubon wrote of these parakeets, "The woods are the habitation best fitted for them, and there the richness of their plumage, their beautiful mode of flight, and even their screams, afford welcome intimation that our darkest forests and most sequestered swamps are not destitute of charms." In later years he was to write: "Our Parakeets are rapidly diminishing in number, and in some districts, where twenty-five years ago they were plentiful, scarcely any are now to be seen." Pileated Woodpecker, from the original plate 111 by John James Audubon which we purchased and physically used in our re-creation process. Certainly this vivid illustration is one of Audubon's finest compositions. This Princeton direct-camera facsimile is viewed by many as the finest re-creation ever accomplished. Princetons are not glossy posters or common ink-jet giclees, but are true Audubon fine art prints. Audubon White Pelican. Special award: In Audubon's day, Philadelphia was the center of publishing in the young United States. Today it is the headquarters of Neographics, a professional Graphic Arts Association of printers and lithographers from the surrounding 62 county area. In 1987, the print you are looking at won their "Nth" award, or Best in Show. Some say it may be the finest Audubon re-creation ever produced.
Audubon Pinnated Grous. This painting was probably done in 1824, when Audubon was near the Great Lakes. It depicts two males fighting over a female and is one of the few works in which Audubon drew all three of the compositional elements: birds, plants, and landscape. Of the tiger lily Audubon wrote: "This beautiful plant,...grows in swamps and moist copses, in the Northern and Eastern States, as far as Virginia, as well as in the western prairies,...I was forced to reduce the stem, in order to introduce it into my drawing, the back ground of which is an attempt to represent our original western meadows." Audubon Blue Crane. Audubon wrote of the little blue heron: "You may see this graceful Heron, quietly and in silence walking along the margins of the water, with an elegance and grace which can never fail to please you. Each regularly-timed step is lightly measured, while the keen eye of the bird seeks for and watches the equally cautious movements of the objects towards which it advances with all imaginable care. When at a proper distance, it darts forth its bill with astonishing celerity, to pierce and secure its prey." Audubon Purple Heron. Audubon drew both the birds and the background in Florida in April 1832. When he first saw them in the Keys, he puzzled at their coloration: "Some of them were as white as driven snow, the rest of a delicate purplish tint, inclining to grey on the back and wings, with heads and necks of a curious reddish colour. Males and females there were, but they were all of one species..." He concluded that those with white plumage were immature birds. He was incorrect, since in this species, coloring depends on the individual and has no relation to either age or sex. It is dimorphic and displays two color phases, one white, the other purplish blue. The birds illustrated here are both adults.
Snowy Heron. In the early spring of 1832, Audubon and his assistant George Lehman stayed at the home of John Bachman in Charleston, South Carolina. Audubon wrote of the thousands of snowy egrets that had arrived there by March 25 and "were seen in the marshes and rice fields, all in full plumage." Soon he painted this magnificent egret, while Lehman added the landscape of a rice plantation in the Carolina low country. Audubon American Flamingo. The flamingo's highly specialized manner of feeding is as noteworthy as its dramatic coloring.  The bird plunges its head underwater upside down, then with the upper bill of its sickle-shaped beak serving as a dredge and the tongue as a sieve, it scoops small shellfish from the bottom of shallow lagoons. Audubon observed and actually depicted this in one of the Flamingos in the background.

Set includes, from top left ...
Brown Pelican, Snowy Owl, Carolina Parrot, Pileated Woodpecker, American White Pelican,
Pinnated Grous, Blue Crane, Purple Heron,
Snowy Egret, and the American Flamingo.

Bill Steiner, author of Audubon Prints: A Collector's Guide to Every Edition:
 "They are true prints - great paper, incredible detail and true colors.
Simply the finest Audubon facsimiles ever made!"