John James Audubon's boundless enthusiasm for the natural wonders of North America found magnificent expression in The Birds of America, perhaps the most beautiful bird book ever produced. Virtually all of the scholarly attention paid to Audubon has been devoted to the double elephant folio of The Birds, published in Great Britain between 1827 and 1838. But, as Ron Tyler reveals in this ground-breaking study, even before the larger work was completed, Audubon was contemplating a "petit edition," which would bring his birds to a much larger - and more profitable - audience. This was the royal octavo edition, one of the handsomest publications created in America during the first half of the nineteenth century. Published in seven volumes measuring approximately 8 by 11 inches (as opposed to the double elephant folio's 39 1/2 by 26 1/2 inches), it was a truly national work. It went through nine editions during the nineteenth century and sold across the country, providing financial support for Audubon's family for years after his death. Audubon himself called it his "salvator." Because the royal octavo edition is a work of art in its own right and the source of much of Audubon's reputation and popularity, Ron Tyler offers an engrossing narrative of the "little work's" conception, production, distribution, and reception. He mines a rich store of hitherto neglected sources, including Audubon family account books, newly discovered original drawings for the octavo edition, numerous proofs for the plates, sales records, and personal correspondence, for a fresh look at this important aspect of Audubon's career. This study carefully reconstructs the processes that produced the most popular natural history book of the nineteenth century. Tyler describes the changes that Audubon made for his "petit edition," including the addition of seventeen species; explains the printing methods used to produce the plates; discusses, for the first time, the surprising differences between the plates in the double elephant folio and in the royal octavo and subsequent octavo editions; and outlines the way the Audubon family sold and distributed such a large and complex work. From these explorations, Audubon emerges not only as a woodsman artist, but also as a careful and persistent businessman of proven entrepreneurial ability. Tyler's final chapter puts Audubon's art, and the prodigious accomplishment of its publication in both the large and small formats, in the larger context of American Romanticism. Audubon was successful largely because of his expressive and colorful paintings, which embodied America's Romantic soul at a time when it was possible to reach a large audience. This new assessment of Audubon as an artist places the great ornithologist in the aesthetic context he deserves as one of America's most important Romantic painters.

Audubon's Great National Work: The Royal Octavo Edition of the Birds of America

Science & Math

Tyler, Ron

Nature & Ecology

Univ of Texas Pr

Paintings, drawings, prints, and excerpts from the accounts of artists, writers, and travelers offer a description of the U.S., both wilderness and town, prior to 1876

Visions of America: Pioneer Artists in a New Land

Arts & Photography

Erisman, Fred

Graphic Design

Thames&Hudson

Incorporating the latest scholarship, this text chronicles the development of the political, economic, and social identity of Texas through the unique insight of three authors. The thematically arranged text covers the full scope of Spanish exploration and colonization efforts, as well as the transformation of the Texas economy and society in the 20th century.The first theme, "Texas as place," presents the state as a crossroads of geographies and cultures, while the second theme, "Texas as opportunity," features the progression of visitors, immigrants, and Native Texans as they learn to make use of the resources the region offers. The third theme, "Texas as 'cultural centrifuge,'" focuses on the convergence, separation, and emergence of various cultural groups in the state.

Texas: Crossroads of North America

History

De la Teja, Jesús F.

Marks, Paula

Americas

Cengage Learning'

THE COWBOY is an extraordinary and imperishable American folk hero - a part of the past, a part of the present, and an embodiment of the qualities and characteristics Americans like best in themselves. This book about him combines three elements, each giving a dimension to the mixture of legend and reality that has become the cowboy's image. Ron Tyler, curator of history at the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in Fort Worth, Texas, has written the cowboy's story from his first appearance in the 16th century, when the arrival of Spanish horses made it possible to herd cattle over the vast plains and prairies of North America, to the present day. In particular, he celebrates the glory days, after the Civil War, when the growing longhorn herds, the advancing railroads, and venturesome ranchers founded the American beef cattle industry, and our basic emotional response to the cowboy-hero was formed. It's all here - the Mexican beginnings of cattle herding, the men who built the great ranches, the trail drives, the droughts, stampedes, and blizzards, the cow towns, the range ware, the cowboy's work, his functional gear, his exceptional horsemanship, his nomadic temperament, deadpan wit, and stiff-necked independence - like a mustang that'll never be broke - much of it told in the vivid and colorful narratives of the cowboys themselves, and much of it illustrated with the finest historical photography of the 19th-century cowboy. The major photography of THE COWBOY is the result of two dedicated years' work by Bank Langmore, who traveled more than 20,000 miles through cattle country from Mexico to Canada to depict the cowboy today.

The cowboy

New York: Ridge Press

For nearly half a century, celebrated historian Ron Tyler has researched, interpreted, and exhibited western American art. This splendid volume, gleaned from Tyler’s extensive career of connoisseurship, brings together eight of the author’s most notable essays, reworked especially for this volume. Beautifully illustrated with more than 150 images, Western Art, Western History tells the stories of key artists, both famous and obscure, whose provocative pictures document the people and places of the nineteenth-century American West. The artists depicted in these pages represent a variety of personalities and artistic styles. According to Tyler, each of them responded in unique ways to the compelling and exotic drama that unfolded in the West during the nineteenth century—an age of exploration, surveying, pleasure travel, and scientific discovery. In eloquent and engaging prose, Tyler unveils a fascinating cast of characters, including the little-known German-Russian artist Louis Choris, who served as a draftsman on the second Russian circumnavigation of the globe; the exacting and precise Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, who accompanied Prince Maximilian of Wied on his sojourn up the Missouri River; and the young American Alfred Jacob Miller, whose seemingly frivolous and romantic depictions of western mountain men and American Indians remained largely unknown until the mid-twentieth century. Other artists showcased in this volume are John James Audubon, George Caleb Bingham, Alfred E. Mathews, and, finally, Frederic Remington, who famously sought to capture the last glimmers of the “old frontier.” A common thread throughout Western Art, Western History is the important role that technology—especially the development of lithography—played in the dissemination of images. As the author emphasizes, many works by western artists are valuable not only as illustrations but as scientific documents, imbued with cultural meaning. By placing works of western art within these broader contexts, Tyler enhances our understanding of their history and significance.

Western Art, Western History: Collected Essays (Volume 35) (The Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art and Photography of the American West)

History & Criticism

University of Oklahoma Press

Book by Adams, Celeste Marie, Kelly, Franklin, Tyler, Ron

America: Art and the West

Kelly, Franklin

Adams, Celeste Marie

Harry N.Abrams, Inc.

Presents reproductions, with descriptions that represent the work of the most important American artists from 1840 to the present

American Paintings: Selections from the Amon Carter Museum

Myers, Jane

Amon Carter Museum of Western Art

Thistlethwaite, Mark

Little,Brown & Co

John Addison Stryker started photographing rodeos back in the late 1910s-early 1920s, when rodeo was a tournament of working cowboys rather than the crowd-pleasing spectacle it has become today. His pioneering photos show riding, roping, and wrestling events in dynamic action. Includes more than sixty black and white Stryker photographs. Ron Tyler's biography of Stryker also traces the emergence of the rodeo from its small town history to today's big shows.

Rodeo of John Addison Stryker

Literature & Fiction

Mythology & Folk Tales

Encino Pr

Introduction by Peter H. Hassrick. Bound in the publisher's original rust cloth with the spine stamped in gilt.

American Frontier Life; Early Western Painting and Prints

Clark, Carol -etal.

Architecture

Amon Carter; Buffalo Bill Historical Center; Abbeville Press

First edition. No marking or writing or creasing in book. Some slight wear on top and bottom edges by spine.

American Frontier Life: Early Western Painting and Prints

Abbeville Pr

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