Audubon, John Woodhouse

Illustrated Notes of an Expedition Through Mexico and California. New York: Published by J. W. Audubon, 1852



Folio (17 x 12 3/4 in.; 431 x 324 mm). 4 very fine handcolored lithographed plates after Audubon by C. Gildenmeister, printed by Nagel & Weingartner; text foxed and browned, title-page and 3 following leaves with a few very short marginal tears, final few leaves with very small gouge in fore-edge margin, final text page (p. 48) very browned, plates each with a quarter-inch tear to lower margin. Modern polished calf, early sprinked edges. Half green morocco folding-case.

John Forster (armorial bookplate on verso of title-page)

Bennett, p. 5; Cowan, p. 23; Graff 111; Howes A390; Kurutz, Gold Rush 21; Reese, American Color Plate Books 41

First edition, handcolored issue, of one of the great rarities of western Americana and color-plate Americana. "In 1849 John Woodhouse Audubon joined the gold rush, travelling to California across Texas and Northern Mexico. On his return, he planned an ambitious plate book of forty plates in ten parts, illustrating scenes from his trip and in the mines. Despite the tremendous national interest in the gold rush, he was unable to generate enough subscriptions to justify the publication, so he packaged the whole letterpress text, with the plates of the projected first part, as a complete book" (Reese).

The text published here, edited from Audubon's notebooks, actually covers only the first half of his journey to California, describing his travels from New York to the village of Jesus Maria in Chihuahua, near the Sonora border. Frank Heywood Hodder speculated that the present work represents simply the first number of the subsequently abandoned larger work. Audubon's full notebooks were transcribed by his daughter, Maria, and published by Arthur Clark in 1906 under the title Audubon's Western Journal: 1849–1850; Being the MS. Record of a Trip from New York to Texas, and an Overland Journey through Mexico and Arizona to the Gold-Fields of California.

The four stunning plates depict "Fourth of July Camp"; "Night Watch"; Cañon, Jesus Maria"; and "Jesus Maria." Thomas Streeter, one of the many major collectors of Americana who was not able to obtain a copy of Illustrated Notes, had tinted copies of the first and fourth of the plates (Streeter sale 5:3166, 3167).

Rare: prior to copies appearing in 2006 and 2007, no copy had been recorded in the auction records since the George Paullin sale at American Art Association, 2 April 1929, lot 303 ($1,200).