The print is the point
Anyone can sell the image — it’s public domain. What you’re buying here is the object: how faithfully, and how durably, the masterwork lands on your wall.
- Museum-grade cotton-rag
- Heavyweight archival cotton-rag stock — the same acid-free paper conservators trust — not thin poster stock.
- Archival pigment, 100+ years
- Pigment inks, not dye: rated to hold their colour past a century without fading or shifting.
- Colour-managed to the source
- Each file is profiled to the holding institution’s own scan, so the print reads as the painting does.
- Gallery canvas on solid wood
- Canvas is gallery-wrapped over kiln-dried solid-wood stretcher bars — taut, square, ready to hang.
Wild Turkey
Plate One of the greatest bird book ever made.
- Work
- John James Audubon, Wild Turkey, from The Birds of America, Plate 1
- Artist / creator
- John James Audubon (American, 1785–1851); engraved by W. H. Lizars
- Origin & date
- The Birds of America, 1827
- Held by
- The Birds of America, Plate 1 (Lizars first-issue engraving)
Format
The full-resolution color-managed file — yours to print, study, and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan's resolution supports sizes up to 30x40 cleanly.
Size
$24.00
The story
Audubon opened The Birds of America with the wild turkey — a deliberate patriotic flourish, the great native bird Benjamin Franklin had thought more worthy than the eagle. A magnificent male strides through the cane of a Louisiana canebrake, head turned, wattles bright, rendered life-size on the enormous “double elephant” sheet Audubon insisted on so that no bird need be shrunk. This is the celebrated first plate, engraved in the earliest state by W. H. Lizars of Edinburgh before Robert Havell took over the great work. Rigorous natural history and swaggering showmanship in one image — the opening note of the most ambitious book in the history of ornithology.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from The Birds of America, Plate 1 (Lizars first-issue engraving)’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Every factual claim about this work — title, artist, date, and holding institution — is verified against the art-historical record and the source institution.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guaranteed.
