RENSSELAERVILLE — John James Audubon was a walking contradiction. He was a failure, and he was a huge success; he was a flirt, and he was a faithful husband; he was a frontiersman, and he was highly literate. The self-taught artist killed thousands upon thousands of birds, yet today his name is synonymous with conservation.

Saturday, bird lovers, naturalists, scholars, art enthusiasts, and filmmakers came from near and far to celebrate Audubon — his life and his legacy — and to be the first to see the Public Broadcasting Service film, John James Audubon: Drawn From Nature.

After viewing the film, conference attendees shook the auditorium with thunderous applause.

Drawn From Nature, using expert opinions, re-enactments, and Audubon’s personal accounts, sketches Audubon’s dramatic life.

Audubon created The Birds of America — a collection of 435 life-size prints. He published, wrote, and promoted the collection, and he was praised by royalty, and attracted the attention of the kings of France and England. He dined with Andrew Jackson in the White House.

The illegitimate son of a French sea captain, he failed as a merchant, was jailed for bankruptcy, and was black-balled three times by the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.
"Audubon died 150 years ago, but I ran into him everywhere," said Larry Hott, one of the film’s two producers.

Hott said that, while filming in Henderson, Ky., he discovered countless businesses named after the famous artist. Hott saw an Audubon gas station, and an Audubon pawn and loan, as well as several other businesses capitalizing on Audubon’s life.
"Everybody wanted to claim Audubon as their own," he said.

Making the film, he said, was a challenge.

Hott, who has been producing documentary films since 1978, said it was difficult to portray a man’s life given such short airtime.
"How do you tell the life of a man, how do you capture him, in 53 minutes"" he asked.

While making the film, Hott said, it was difficult to obtain the necessary permits.

In downtown New York, he said, as soon as the filmmakers pulled up with the permit, ready to shoot, the crew was approached by two cops. Hott explained, they were near the Washington Bridge, a suspected terrorist target.

Many of the buildings Audubon visited and lived in, within the United States, are no longer standing.

Hott also said that it was difficult to decide what should be left in the film and what should be taken out.
Hott said he would have liked to have told more about what happened after Audubon’s death. "What happened to the family"" he asked. "They went belly-up."

The other story that Hott said he wished he’d had time to tell was about George Bird Grinnell, who founded The Audubon Society in 1896.

The society, now with more than 500 chapters in the U.S., is dedicated to preserving animals and their habitats.
Diane Garey, who co-produced the film with Hott, was asked why she and Hott chose Audubon as a subject. She responded, "We’ve always had an interest in the environment."

Garey and Hott have collaborated on many films since 1978, and their most recent film, Niagara Falls, was broadcast nationally on PBS in July 2006.

Drawn From Nature, Hott told The Enterprise, should be released by Bullfrog Films sometime early next year, and it will air on PBS sometime in the spring.

Concerned conference chair
Roswell Eldridge, M.D., the conference chair, said the event "has been a dream for years."

Eldridge, who also provided funding for the film, is deeply concerned with the preservation of Audubon’s work. He said that fewer than 50 double elephant folios remain in the United States.

The double elephant folios are large, four-volume sets, approximately 28 by 39 inches in size, which contain life-size illustrations of Audubon’s Birds of America.

Audubon’s Octavos, the seven-volume sets, of The Birds of America, and the three-volume sets, Quadrupeds of North America, are smaller in size and contain Audubon’s writing.
"As a 12 or 13-year-old, I picked them up and leafed through them"In time, I looked at the observations of each subject," said Eldridge.
Audubon’s affection for his subjects, Eldridge said, "was evident."

The collections, he said, are being broken up, and the illustrations are being sold on eBay.
"You can have a reproduction and preserve the Octavo," Eldridge insisted.

The Octavos, which contain Audubon’s hand-colored prints and Audubon’s personal observations, Eldridge said, are the only place where someone is able to get an impression of Audubon as both an artist and a writer.
"Read one account," he said, "and you’ll see the value." Eldridge added, "It’s hard to imagine them being lost."

Experts chime in

A number of experts were on hand at the conference who cleared up misconceptions about Audubon and paid tribute.

John Chalmers, M.D., traveled farther than anyone to attend.

Chalmers, a retired orthopedic surgeon from Edinburgh, Scotland, author of Audubon in Edinburgh and His Scottish Associates, spoke about his own early interest in birds.

As a young boy, he said, he was on a bird walk near Portland, Ore., and kept an account in his diary of the birds he saw. In the same day, he saw the Audubon Warbler and the MacGillivray warbler.
"This started me off," he said.

Chalmers, interested with Audubon’s Scottish links, spoke about Audubon’s visits to Edinburgh, and his involvement with William MacGillivray, Conservator of the Museum of The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Christoph Irmscher, Ph.D., a professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., editor of John James Audubon: Writings and Drawings, lectured on Audubon’s writing.
Irmscher, at the beginning of the lecture, said he was on "a crusade to rehabilitate Audubon as a writer."

Irmscher began by insisting that Audubon is a great American writer, one of vision, with a masterful handling of the English language.
Audubon, Irmscher said, is always talked of as a painter, not as a writer. Audubon’s writing, he added, is thought of as "subsidiary" or a "bonus."

Audubon’s writing, Irmscher said, suffered injustices — censorship and editing, which resulted in the loss of meaning — and Irmscher supported his opening statements by contrasting edited and original Audubon writing.
"The less we miss of the original Audubon writings, the better," Irmscher said.

To accentuate his points, Irmscher read several of Audubon’s accounts and concluded with an observation found in Audubon’s Writings and Drawings:
"Could you, kind reader, cast a momentary glance on the nest of the Humming Bird, and see, as I have seen, the newly hatched pair of young, little larger than bumble-bees, naked, blind, and so feeble as scarcely to be able to raise their little bill to receive food from the parents; and could you see those parents, full of anxiety and fear, passing and repassing within a few inches of your face, alighting on a twig not more than a yard from your body, waiting the result of your unwelcome visit in a state of the utmost despair, — you could not fail to be impressed with the deepest pangs which parental affection feels on the unexpected death of a cherished child," Audubon wrote.
"Audubon lost two children," Irmscher said. "Lucy and Rose."
Audubon used the pronoun "you," he added, to create involvement with the reader.

Audubon also used anthropomorphism, attributing human feelings to things not human, to tell humans to go and mind their own business. He re-read the passage and its conclusion:
"Then how pleasing it is, on your leaving the spot, to see the returning hope of the parents, when, after examining the nest, they find their nurslings untouched! You might then judge how pleasing it is to a mother of another kind, to hear the physician who has attended her sick child assure her that the crisis is over, and that her babe is saved."
Irmscher concluded, "We should be grateful that the watercolors are still here, that the writing is still here, and that the voice is still here, and it speaks to us."