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Although to be fair, before photography, if you wanted to study an animal, you pretty much had to kill it, stuff it, and maybe make a drawing or painting of it.
by jhbadger 5y ago
Although to be fair, before photography, if you wanted to study an animal, you pretty much had to kill it, stuff it, and maybe make a drawing or painting of it. Lots of naturalists, including ones far greater than Audubon such as Darwin killed many animals.
- Maursault 5y agoI think there is a disconnect here. Certainly, Charles Darwin collected many specimens, but to compare his study with Audubon would be like comparing a suicidal major airline pilot to Stalin. To be clear, one could say Darwin killed specimens out of necessity to study them – while Audubon was obsessed with killing and was fantastically good at it, and then also as an afterthought, perhaps in boredom of not having anything else to kill at the moment, painted the dead thing while he waited to find something else to kill, and all the while he had teams of others killing for him. Darwin was a naturalist... and also a writer and illustrator. Audubon was a notably prolific trophy hunter during a time when everyone hunted, and he also painted. See the difference?