The Bien Edition of Birds of America
Considered rare, the Bien edition is perhaps the least well documented of the major editions of John James Audubon’s landmark Birds of America. It was the first attempt to reproduce the birds life-size. The Bien sheets with one image measure about 26″ by 38″, the same size as the Havells. However, instead of placing one small bird on a large sheet, as in the Havell edition, two smaller images were printed on each sheet.
The story of the Bien edition begins in 1858 when John Woodhouse Audubon (with the lesser involvement of his brother, Victor Gifford Audubon, who was invalided in 1858 and died in 1860) began production of a new folio edition of The Birds of America. Relying on recent innovations in color printing, John hoped to reproduce the life-sized renderings of the original Havell edition double elephant folio at significantly lower cost. To that end, he contracted with Julius Bien to produce a new series of plates to be issued by subscription in 44 parts with a total cost (including letterpress) about half that of the Havell Edition.
Bien, who had immigrated to the United States from Germany, was a well-known innovator and practitioner of color lithography, or chromolithography. Experts believe he transferred the Havell images from the copper plates onto paper, and then onto lithographic stones. By this method he was able to duplicate the subtlety of the engravings with a less expensive process. To color the prints, Bien used additional stones. In some instances, he finished off the print with touches of hand-coloring.
Bien’s prints are not exact reproductions of the Havell images. Biens may vary slightly in size from the Havells, and often include a pale colored background tint. In some cases, Bien made significant changes, adding a landscape where none existed or substituting a new background for the old. The Barn Owl, a dramatic night scene in the Havell Edition, is printed as a daytime scene in the Bien Edition by lightening the sky. The backgrounds in the Bien version of certain prints may be lighter than that of the corresponding Havell aquatint, for example, the Iceland or Jer Falcon.
It is not known exactly how many copies of the American edition were printed, 50 to 100 is the estimate seen most often. Because of financial difficulties exacerbated by the Civil War, the Bien edition was never completed. The collapse of the project precipitated a financial catastrophe for the Audubon family, and probably hastened John Woodhouse’s death in 1862.
Many of the Bien plates that were not distributed to subscribers were eventually sold by or on behalf of the family creditors. Two firms were active in selling the remaining prints, a Boston firm, Estes and Lauriat, and the New York firm Roe Lockwood & Son (which had contracted with John to act as publisher for the Bien Edition and which put out the 5-volume letterpress — a reprint of the octavo edition text — in 1860). The Audubon bankruptcy appears to have left Roe Lockwood & Son in control of many Audubon assets including the octavo editions (both birds and quads) and the Bowen Imperial Folio material. Roe Lockwood or its successor firm, George R. Lockwood, published one or more reprints of all of these editions.