JEAN

See also:

• BAPTISTE

BAPTISTE

See also:

• JEAN BAPTISTE AUDEBERT (1759-1800)

AUDEBERT (1759-1800)  , French artist and naturalist, was born at Rochefort in 1759 . He studied painting and drawing at Paris, and gained considerable reputation as a miniature-painter . Employed in preparing plates for the Histoire des coleopteres of G . A . Olivier (1756-1814), he acquired a taste for natural history . In "Soo appeared his first original work,L'Histoire naturelle des singes, des makis et des galeopitheques, illustrated by sixty-two folio plates, drawn and engraved by himself . The colouring in these plates was unusually beautiful, and was applied by a method devised by himself . Audebert died in Paris in 1800, leaving complete materials for another great work, Histoire des colibris, des oiseaux-mouches, desjacamars et des promerops, which was published in 1802 . Two hundred copies were printed in folio, one hundred in large quarto, and fifteen were printed with the whole text in letters of gold . Another work, left unfinished, was also published after the author's death, L'Histoire des grimpereaux et des oiseaux de paradis . The last two works also appeared together in two volumes, Oiseaux dores ou d reflets metalliques (1802) .