Orders JJ Audubon American Flamingo

Drawn from Nature by J.J. Audubon

Plate CCCCXXX1
American Flamingo
Old Male

From the Collection of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company

Engraved Printed and Coloured by Rob Havell 1838


19" x 16"


This was purchased from a local estate sale of a couple in their 80s. I removed it from the frame it had always been in. I cannot give a specific date, but these are supposed to have been issued between 1946-1960.


FROM THE WEB:
In 1946, R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company (The Lakeside Press of Chicago began, by a process known as “Deeptone Offset,” the reproduction of the prints of the Birds of America for the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee. These reproductions, measuring approximately 21 by 16 inches, were used on large wall calendars. In 1960 the large-size calendar was discontinued and replaced by orders a smaller one, with the prints measuring 11 by 16 inches.
The insurance company estimated that between 1946 (when the calendars were first issued and 1968 over 10,000,000 Audubon prints had been distributed. The larger prints without the calendar were still being offered to the public in 1968, but the supply of many of the individual species had been depleted and would not be restocked. Thus far, 185 of the 435 original prints of the Double Elephant folio have been reproduced by Northwestern Mutual.