AFA Autumn 2021

2021 Antiques & Fine Art 89 1. Harlan and Wilson were both members of the University of Pennsylvania medical class of 1816. 2. Letter from J. J. Audubon to Richard Harlan, November 6, 1831, Collection of College of Physicians of Philadelphia. 3. Letter from J. J. Audubon to Lucy Audubon, November 7, 1831, Howard Corning, ed., Letters of J. J. Audubon 1826-1840 (Boston: Club of Odd Volumes, 1930), Vol. 1, 147–149. 4. For examples of Bachman’s efforts to have Audubon give up “grog and snuff,” see his letters of January 26, 1840, and November 29, 1843, both at the Charleston Museum. 5. Letter from J. J. Audubon to Lucy Audubon, January 16, 1832, Letters of J. J. Audubon , 176. 6. “A Californian’s Recollection of Naturalist Audubon,” The San Francisco Call , Sept. 6, 1896, quoted in Peter B. Logan, Audubon in Labrador , (San Francisco: Ashbryn Press, 2016), Appendix I, 507. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 509. 9. Letter from J. J. Audubon to John Bachman, April 14, 1838, in Audubon Writings and Drawings , Christopher Irmscher, ed. (New York: The Library of America, 1999), Vol. 2, 848. While in America, Audubon seems to have preferred American snuff, but when living in England he used snuff manufactured there and in Europe. Peter Logan has determined that Audubon’s favorite snuff while in London was “Hardham’s No. 37,” a mixture of Dutch and rappee snuff, developed in the 18 th century by John Harham of Fleet Street and used by Sir Joshua Reynolds and other fashionable figures of the era. Personal communication with Peter Logan, May 31, 2021. 10. Letter from John Bachman to J. J. Audubon, July 5, 1839, Harris Papers, Alabama Department of Archives and History. 11. Letter from J. J. Audubon to John Bachman, December 10, 1843, Houghton Library, Harvard University, collection # bms AM 1482 (161). 12. Alice Ford, John James Audubon: A Biography (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), 193. John Rutter Chorley (1807?–1867), with whom Audubon first became acquainted in Liverpool, was the secretary to the Grand Junction Railway between Liverpool and Birmingham and a person to whom Audubon became “warmly attached.” during his time in England. Christine E. Jackson, John James Laforest Audubon: An English Perspective (U.K: privately published, 2013), 41. 13. See Richard Rhodes, John James Audubon: The Making of an American . (New York: Knopf, 2004), 303. 14. Audubon journal, Jan. 1, 1828, quoted in Francis Hobart Herrick, Audubon the Naturalist (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1938). 15. See letter from J. J. Audubon to John Bachman, May 29, 1836, in Letters of John James Audubon , 119–120. See also letter from J. J. Audubon to Lucy Audubon, June 8, 1836, Audubon Museum, Henderson, Kentucky. 16. Ford, A Biography, 386. 17. The Wiskonsan [sic] Enquirer (Madison, Wisconsin), July 16, 1842, claimed the snuff box was worth $2000: “Mr. Audubon, the ornithologist, has received a gold snuff box, set in diamonds, from the Emperor of Russia. The box is of splendid workmanship and is supposed to have cost not less than $2000.” I am indebted to Andrée M. Miller, Curator of the John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove, Montgomery County Division of Parks, Trails, and Historic Sites, for this reference. 18. Letter from Dr. Benjamin Phillips to J. J. Audubon, in Ford, A Biography , 386. 19. Alice Ford, personal communication, October 16, 1993. In her 1988 biography of Audubon, Ms. Ford incorrectly states that Audubon sold the box, but her subsequent research revealed that this was not the case. My attempts to trace the snuff boxes mentioned in Audubon’s correspondence, have, so far, been without success. 20. Letter from George Burgess to Edward Harris, April 26, 1862, Harris Collection, State Archives of Alabama. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Letter from Lucy Audubon to Edward Harris, April 28, 1862, Harris collection, State Archives of Alabama. 24. Letter from Lucy Audubon to Edward Harris, October 16, 1862, Harris collection, State Archives of Alabama. 25. Richard Rhodes, John James Audubon: The Making of an American (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 436. Rhodes claims the cost was $2000, but Roberta Olson, the curator in charge of this collection, says the actual cost was $4000. See Roberta J. M. Olson, Audubon’s Aviary: The Original Watercolors for “The Birds of America (New York: Rizzoli, 2012), 35. 26. Personal correspondence from Alice Ford, October 16, 1993. “Burgess and his wife Valeria kept in close touch with her [Lucy Audubon]. What she could not repay in cash she tried to repay in gifts. I have no doubt that it was Lucy who gave him the snuff box.” Also “I do not doubt that the [snuff] box came from Lucy for favors done.” Personal correspondence October 26, 1993. According to Ms. Ford, Lucy also “gave the Burgesses a number of folio proof sheets ‘for the children to color’ or play with.” 27. John J. Audubon: A National Exhibition catalogue, item 90, Philadelphia, 1938, 29. Basing the information on Burgess family lore, the catalogue incorrectly states that the snuff box had been a gift to Audubon by Louis Philippe (1773–1850), King of the French from 1830 to 1848, the last King and penultimate monarch of France. 28. Alice Ford, personal correspondence, October 16, 1993 “They [the Burgesses] had a New York City house where, no doubt, [the 1831 Nathaniel Mills snuff] box spent some years. I have a dim recollection that Mrs. Thomas Burgess hoped to sell it in the 1950s when I met her, briefly, in the city.” 29. Important American Silver: The Collection of James H. Halpin , Christies, New York, Friday, January 22, 1993 (Sale HALPIN-7624). 30. Although the generational title “Junior” is not indicated in the engraving of the snuff box’s recipient, he was certainly the one for whom Audubon’s gift was intended, for Robert Havell, Sr. had died in 1832. 31. I am indebted to Jennifer Spence, the former State Curator, Kentucky Department of Parks Tourism, Arts, & Heritage, for this information, and to Heidi Taylor-Caudill, the current curator at the Audubon Museum in Henderson, for making images of the Havell snuff box available. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank David Barquist, the H. Richard Dietrich Jr. Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for providing a formal description of the Audubon snuff box, and Alice Irwin for helping me contact various members of the Audubon Family in hope of locating other snuff boxes owned by the artist (without success). I also wish to thank Jennifer Spence, former State Curator, Kentucky Department of Parks, Tourism, Arts, & Heritage, for her help with materials at the Audubon Museum in Henderson, Kentucky. The Audubon scholars who assisted me with my research were the late Alice Ford, Roberta Olson, Ron Tyler, William Souder, Richard Rhodes, Peter Logan, Martin Sidor, Christine Jackson, and Christoph Irmscher. To all of them I extend my heartfelt thanks. Robert McCracken Peck is Curator of Art and Artifacts and Senior Fellow at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.