The Museum was pleased to welcome hundreds of children—from toddlers to high school students to our annual spring break programs. The library and archives hosted a sketching from the collection activity for four straight days, drawing upon our artists archives and extensive art collection. The theme was artists’ depictions of the flora and fauna of the United States. A fair number of the pieces chosen for the children to sketch were those of artists that the Constable brothers met or whom they would be aware—John James Audubon, Mark Catesby, Jean-François Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse, and Alexander Wilson.

The Constables were well read and engaged by the natural wonders to be found in the fledgling Untied States. Catesby predates the brothers by decades, and his book The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, with its descriptions of the landscape would have been relevant to the brother’s planned journey. Similarly, Galaup’s work (A Voyage Round the World, Performed in the years, 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, by the Boussole and Astrolabe) was a recent journey by a French Count that closely paralleled a similar one by the British explorer George Vancouver (A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World). Both were focused on circumnavigations of the globe, and spent their time in North America mapping the west coast. Of particular note was the work of Alexander Wilson, a Scottish emigré, who created the first great study of the birds of America (American Ornithology, or, The Natural History of the Birds of the United States). The brothers would meet the young John James Audubon, before he had begun his landmark study of birds (The Birds of America) that would eclipse Wilson’s work.