Frigate Pelican — Audubon, Birds of America Plate 271

Nothing but wings. A frigatebird dives diagonally across the sheet, its long angular wings and forked tail forming an almost abstract black shape against the cream paper. Only at the bottom does the bird reveal its head: a pale hooked beak, a blue ring around the eye and a touch of orange at the throat. In the upper corner, Audubon drew two studies of its feet.

Audubon painted the bird in the Florida Keys in the spring of 1832. Until that voyage he had only glimpsed frigatebirds at a distance over the Gulf of Mexico; in the Keys he watched them gather in flocks of fifty to five hundred pairs.

Why it works on your wall

• Strikingly modern: a black silhouette on a light ground that looks almost like a contemporary drawing
• Movement on the wall: the dive gives energy to a living room, a staircase or a long corridor
• Framing tip: a thin black frame and no mount; in a large size the wings take over the whole wall

The plate

Plate 271 was engraved by Robert Havell in London in 1835, with the caption “Frigate Pelican, Tachypetes aquilus, Male adult”. Today the bird is known as the magnificent frigatebird (Fregata magnificens), a seabird of tropical coasts famous for its huge wingspan.

• Artist: John James Audubon (1785–1851), engraved by Robert Havell Jr.
• Work: The Birds of America, plate 271 (CCLXXI)
• Date: painted in the Florida Keys in 1832, engraved in 1835
• Technique: etching and aquatint, coloured by hand
• Bird: magnificent frigatebird, Fregata magnificens, adult male

John James Audubon (1785–1851) set out to paint every bird of North America at life size. Between 1827 and 1838, his watercolours became the 435 plates of The Birds of America, etched and aquatinted in London, most of them by Robert Havell Jr., printed on “double elephant” sheets of about 100 × 66 cm and coloured by hand, one by one. Read the story of the book.

Your print

• Restored from a high-definition scan of the original hand-coloured plate, keeping the warm tone of the old paper
• Printed in Europe on thick archival matte paper, FSC certified
• From A4 to A0, plus 40×60, 50×70, 60×90 and 70×100 cm and 12×18 to 27×40 inch sizes, all made for standard frames
• Free shipping, no minimum order. Shipped rolled in a sturdy tube

Pair it with the Osprey or the Brown Pelican, or explore all our John James Audubon prints.