Great Cinereous Owl — Audubon, Birds of America Plate 351

Concentric rings around two yellow eyes. Perched on a bare, broken branch, a great grey owl turns its head over its shoulder to look at you. Its round face is drawn in fine concentric circles of grey and white, around small piercing yellow eyes. The whole body is a fine mottling of grey and brown, and behind it the sky fades into soft clouds.

Audubon considered it the largest owl in North America and noted how rarely it was seen. He recorded one taken alive on a woodpile at Marblehead, Massachusetts, one February morning in 1831, and in the winter of 1832 saw another fly over Boston harbour among the gulls.

Why it works on your wall

• Soft and calm: greys, browns and pale blues that bring quiet to a bedroom, a reading corner or a study
• A face that stays with you: the owl’s gaze gives the image a real presence, even in a medium size
• Framing tip: light oak or white wood; it also makes a fine trio with our other Audubon owls

The plate

Plate 351 was engraved by Robert Havell in London in 1837, with the caption “Great Cinereous Owl, Strix cinerea, Female Adult”. Today the bird is called the great grey owl (Strix nebulosa), a hunter of the northern forests and still the tallest owl in North America.

• Artist: John James Audubon (1785–1851), engraved by Robert Havell Jr.
• Work: The Birds of America, plate 351 (CCCLI)
• Date: engraved in 1837
• Technique: etching and aquatint, coloured by hand
• Bird: great grey owl, Strix nebulosa, adult female

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 Snowy Owl, the Great Horned Owl or the Raven, or explore all our John James Audubon prints.