Audubon was born in the French colony of Santo Domingo (now Haiti), the son of Captain Jean Audubon, a French sailor and adventurer, and one of his mistresses, Jeanne Rabine, a French chambermaid / slave, who died six months later. Growing up in America, Audubon quickly fell in love with the eastern Pennsylvania countryside and its animals, often roaming the woods and fields incongruously wearing satin breeches and silk stockings. He became an enthusiastic and skilled hunter, both for sport and for his art. He collected all kinds of wildlife specimens, which he both preserved and sketched in attic rooms at Mill Grove.
Because he was familiar with the activities of his subjects and used freshly killed birds wired in his unique manner, Audubon was able to capture the shapes, textures, plumage, colors, and typical positions of his birds more accurately than other artists.
Although Victorian Taxidermist's attitudes to wildlife seem almost barbaric by modern standards, it should be remembered that Victorian naturalists did not access to binoculars or cameras. Often, the only method of identifying flying specimens was to shoot first and study afterwards. This is not an excuse, merely a factual reality. Also in the defence of the Victorian and perhaps the suggestion that they were responsible for the decimation of various species, this is perhaps true. It is however nothing compared with today's industrial society. Habitat loss, liberal and perhaps unregulated use of herbicides, insecticides have also taken their toll. Not to mention massive growth in the worlds population and the demands that makes. Yes the Victorians played their part, but today we are causing significant envrionmental damage, the results of which we have no knowledge
Baron Georges Cuvier
Without a doubt, Georges Cuvier possessed one of the finest minds in history. Almost single-handedly, he founded vertebrate paleontology as a scientific discipline and created the comparative method of organismal biology, an incredibly powerful tool. It was Cuvier who firmly established the fact of the extinction of past lifeforms. He contributed an immense amount of research in vertebrate and invertebrate zoology and paleontology, and also wrote and lectured on the history of science.
Biography of Cuvier 1769-1832
Cuvier was born on August 23, 1769, at Montbéliard, a French-speaking community in the Jura Mountains that was not under French jurisdiction at the time; it was ruled by the Duke of Württemberg. Cuvier studied at a school which the Duke had founded, the Carolinian Academy in Stuttgart, from 1784 to 1788. He then took a position as tutor to a noble family in Normandy, which kept him out of the way of the worst of the violence of the French Revolution; there he was named to a position in the local government and began to make his reputation as a naturalist. In 1795, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire invited him to come to Paris; he was appointed an assistant, and shortly thereafter a professor of animal anatomy, at the newly reformed Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle (National Museum of Natural History). Cuvier stayed at his post when Napoleon came to power, and was appointed to several government positions, including Inspector-General of public education and State Councillor, by Napoleon. Cuvier continued as a state councillor under three successive Kings of France; he thus accomplished the almost unbelievable feat of serving under three different, opposing French governments (Revolution, Napoleonic, and monarchy) and dying in his bed. All the while, Cuvier lectured and did research at the Musée National, amazing his colleagues with his energy and devotion to science. By the time of his death he had been knighted and made a Baron and a Peer of France.
Sir Richard Owen, Curator and Founder of the Natural History Museum, Kensington. This is the man who would have commissioned taxidermists, the likes of Cullingford and Duncan to prepars some of the exhibits at the museum where Darwin's collection is now housed.
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Richard Owen was the son of a West India merchant. He studied briefly at Edinburgh (1824), then at a private London anatomy school. Through hard work and serious networking, Owen pushed his way to the heights of Victorian science. In 1827 he was appointed Assistant Curator of the Royal College of Surgeons' Hunterian Collections and then Hunterian professor (1836), and conservator (1842). He was elected to a fellowship of the Royal Society in 1834 for his work on monotremes and marsupials. Following his mentor Joseph Henry Green, Owen promoted an idealist biology based on German Naturphilosophie. By the mid-1840s Owen was the leader of British comparative anatomy and an important exponent of a natural theology or attribution of design in nature. In 1842, he named the taxon Dinosauria. The support Owen lent to orthodox men of science and supporters of the status quo and sometimes a fawning elitism made him a favourite of elite conservative patrons. The royal family presented him with a cottage in Richmond Park and Robert Peel put him on the Civil List.
In his notorious review of the Origin of Species in 1860, Owen tried to undercut Darwin's priority by attributing evolution to a mysterious "continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things". His work on fossils and dinosaurs (a word which he invented!) aroused much public debate. He was fiercely opposed to Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, which eventually led to his academic downfall as he was viewed as being old-fashioned - and a bit of a dinosaur himself! However, although he was misguided in his opposition to Darwin's theory of evolution, his fame as the British 'Cuvier' was popularly established
It is important to realise that taxidermy was never the preserve of the working man. These items were and still are the preserve of luxury. By there very nature they are coveted for not only who did them but also the species they represent. It has been stated on many times that when you purchase an item of Victorian taxidermy you are to soem extent buying history. It has taken me a long time to realize this and the research on this website has lead me to the same conclusion that they are worth preserving.
Let's look at some of the facts of Victorian Taxidermists. These items were produced at a time when:
The industrial revolution was in full swing
Great Britain still had am empire
No telecommunications
There was very little sanitation to speak of
The car was yet to be in mass production
No television and limited forms of communication
No electrical refrigeration
No electric light bulb, mainly gas
Steam was the major form of locomotion
Limited running water in homes
No aircraft
No inside toilets for working class
Bathhouses instead of baths at home
Child labour was normal and legal
No votes for women
Most people despite the industrial revolution still worked in agriculture
There was no welfare state
The list is endless and yet they were able to produce many fine examples of natural history without the aid of any of the above?. For that alone it has my admiration.
Victorian Taxidermy's birth
THE 1851 GREAT EXHIBITION
The Great Exhibition of the Works and Industry of All Nations opened in London on 1st May, 1851. Approximately 100,000 objects were on display to the public from 14000 exhibitors, half of them British and in reality, was a celebration of British achievements put on for foreigners to admire and emulate. To house the Great Exhibition, a huge glass conservatory designed by self-made man Joseph Paxton, was erected in Hyde Park more than a third of a mile long and 66 feet high. It became known as Crystal Palace because of the large amount of glass used in its construction. The works of fourteen taxidermists were exhibited at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, the majority of those present could be found in Class 29 - Miscallaneous Manufactures and Small Wares. The following names were those taxidermy exhibitors present at the 1851 Exhibition.
Dennis, Rev. J.B.P. - Bury St. Edmunds
Gordon, C. - Museum Dover
Harbor, Thomas - Reading
Beevor, J. (M.D.) - Newark - upon – Trent
Walford, C., sen - Witham Essex
Walford, J. - Witham Essex
Williams, Thomas Mutlow - Oxford St., London
Leadbeater,John - Golden Square, London
Spencer, Thomas. - Great Portland St., London
Gardner, James - Oxford St. London
Dunbar, William - Golspie, Scotland
Bartlett, Abraham Dee - College St, Camden Town
Hancock , J.A. - London
Plouquet , H. - Stuttgart, Wurtemburg (Germany)
Plouquet received rave reviews for his exhibits of birds and small and large game specimens, which at the time were amongst the finest examples of group taxidermy ever put on display to the public. In one review, his life-size mounts, composed to imitate hunt scenes portrayed by famous artists were themselves described as “beautiful specimens of the art of the taxidermist". Bartlett was of particular interest at the Exhibition for his display that included that of a lifesize reconstruction of the extinct Dodo bird. Formerly an inhabitant of the island of Mauritius, the Dodo was discovered by the Dutch traveler Vasco di Gauma in 1497. The species was said by Dutch explorers to have existed on the island in abundance between the years 1598 and 1600 but became extinct soon afterwards .
Mention is made within the Great Exhibition 1851 catalogue (vol. 2, p.817) of the details of a stuffed Dodo specimen which formed part of the Tradescants Museum in 1600. This specimen passed into the hands of a Dr Ashmol, who later transferred it to the University of Oxford where it was virtually destroyed in 1755, all with the exception of the dried head and foot.
A notable absence from the London taxidermists present at the Great Exhibition was none other than John Gould, although he was represented through an exhibition of a new coloring technique of his plate books he had just patented.
However, Gould had the commercial mind to prepare an exhibition of stuffed taxidermy Hummingbirds and display them 3 miles away from Hyde Park in the Zoological Gardens of Regent Park. With the approval granted by the Zoological Society of London, Gould financed and constructed a wooden building some 60 feet long near the Zoological Lion house for the purpose of the exhibition. This was a shrewd move by Gould the businessman for had he exhibited the hummingbirds in the Crystal Palace where charging was forbidden, he would have earned nothing. At the Zoological Gardens he took full advantage of the huge crowds flocking to London to visit the Great Exhibition, charged his visitors six pence at a time and managed to make a good profit which was said to be eight hundred pounds.
The exhibition consisted of twenty-four elaborate display cases each approximately 2 feet 2 inches high and 1 foot 10 inches wide, arranged in rows and surmounted by canopies suspended from the ceiling to diffuse the light. The design of each case differed according to whether they had four, six, or eight panels of glass in their structure, and each rested on a wooden base, painted black and gold, which were all raised on a pedestal support.
Seventy-five thousand people visited Goulds display of Hummingbirds in 1851, compared with over six million people who visited the Crystal Palace between 1 may and 15 October 1851.
. It is also interesting to note that the last single case, from the above exhibit, that is not in a museum recently sold on Ebay (January 2005)for £5,000. This case has not stayed in the UK. It appears to have been purchased by an American collector come dealer. This is another piece of Victorian Taxidermy of significance that shall not return to the UK. It's importance is clearly not recognised.
For more information and some 2500 images of taxidermy, then please visit the website
www.taxidermy4cash.com