Audubon Did Not Sleep Here
By Beth Yarbrough
The reasonable assumption would be that noted wildlife artist, John James Audubon, would have had at least a tenuous connection to the house on Whitehead Street in Key West that bears his name.
What is more, Audubon House is filled to the brim with his original works and priceless early original prints from the massive books he first published in the 1800’s.
Imagine our surprise, then, to learn that the famous artist never lived here, nor even visited for an overnight. In fact, the best they can determine is that the only thing tying Audubon to this house is the existence of a certain leaf on his painting of a rare white-crowned pigeon known only to exist in the Florida Keys. Apparently, the leaf was part of a tree that had been brought to Key West from Cuba and was growing nowhere else on the island except in the back yard of this house.
How that one leaf managed to propel the artist who painted it into somehow becoming the namesake of the entire house is still unclear to me, but boy is he ever the namesake. There is even a lovely gift shop in a small cottage on the edge of the property where Audubon prints, books and gifts proliferate.
And I will say, the spot is quite inspiring. Given a garden like this and a porch to overlook it all, the notion that it was actually used by the bird man himself is very easy to advance and even easier to embrace. And to think that it is all held together by a picture of a leaf. Only in Key West, friends. Only in Key West.
PS: During one of our recent June sabbaticals on the island, we discovered a wounded baby bird in the foliage at the edge of our pool. My husband, Joe, and daughter, Ashley, gathered him up and took him to the Wildlife Sanctuary on the island, where they received the good news that he merely had a bruised wing that would heal. But the best news of all, the bird was apparently one of the aforementioned (and very rare and endangered) white crowned pigeons that still inhabit Key West. Mr. Audubon would be so proud.
Photos of Audubon House by Beth Yarbrough. Image of white crowned pigeon via Audubon Prints.
Thank you for writing this interesting piece. I looked into Audubon a good while back. We know him as John James Audubon but early on he had several names. The misbegotten son of French plantation owner Captain Jean Audubon and his Creole servant, Jeanne Rabin, Audubon received the name Jean Rabin at birth. Soon after birth his servant mother died and he and his sister were spirited off to Nantes, France. There, the captain’s wife, Anne, raised them. In 1794, the couple adopted them and Jean Rabin got his second name: Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon.
Such a beautiful property but strange he had such superfluous connection to the actual place.... Anything for tourist dollars I guess but I think the Hemingway house might be a better investment although I'd rather go to a library with some of his archival sources being the book nerd that I am.