U.S. #1863
1985 22¢ John J. Audubon
Great Americans Series
- 23rd stamp in Great Americans Series
- Only Great Americans stamp issued for the 22¢ first-class rate
- Issued three days before Audubon’s 200th birthday
Stamp Category: Definitive
Series: Great Americans
Value: 22¢; first-class rate
First Day of Issue: April 23, 1985
First Day City: New York, New York
Quantity Issued: 500,000,000
Printed by: Bureau of Engraving & Printing
Printing Method: Engraved
Format: Panes of 100
Perforations: 11
Color: Dark chalky blue
Why the stamp was issued: To pay the 22¢ first-class rate. The stamp was also issued three days before Audubon’s 200th birthday. Audubon had previously appeared on a Famous Americans stamp (#874) and his hand-colored engraving Columbia Jay was featured on US #1241 and #C71. His work would later appear on an American Treasures stamp (#3650) and the 1998 Four Centuries of American Art sheet (#3236e).
About the stamp design: Christopher Calle created the portrait on this stamp, based on a painting by Audubon’s son, John Woodhouse Audubon, in the collections of the New York Historical Society.
First Day City: The First Day ceremony for this stamp was held at the New York Historical Society in New York City. That city was selected as it was there that Audubon and his wife lived at “Minniesland” along the Hudson River.
Unusual fact about this stamp: Imperforate error varieties exist – vertical pairs imperforate horizontally, horizontal pairs imperforate between, and vertical pairs imperforate between. There have also been stamps discovered with some of the ink missing, likely due to foreign material on the printing preventing the ink from printing on the stamp.
About the Great Americans Series: The Great Americans Series was created to replace the Americana Series. The new series would be characterized by a standard definitive size, simple design, and monochromatic colors.
This simple design included a portrait, “USA,” the denomination, the person’s name, and in some cases, their occupation or reason for recognition. The first stamp in the new series was issued on December 27, 1980. It honored Sequoyah and fulfilled the new international postcard rate that would go into effect in January 1981.
The Great Americans Series would honor a wider range of people than the previous Prominent Americans and Liberty Series. While those series mainly honored presidents and politicians, the Great Americans Series featured people from many fields and ethnicities. They were individuals who were leaders in education, the military, literature, the arts, and human and civil rights. Plus, while the previous series only honored a few women, the Great Americans featured 15 women. This was also the first definitive series to honor Native Americans, with five stamps.
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) produced most of the stamps, but private firms printed some. Several stamps saw multiple printings. The result was many different varieties, with tagging being the key to understanding them. Though there were also differences in perforations, gum, paper, and ink color.
The final stamp in the series was issued on July 17, 1999, honoring Justin S. Morrill. Spanning 20 years, the Great Americans was the longest-running US definitive series. It was also the largest series of face-different stamps, with a total of 63.
Click here for all the individual stamps and click here for the complete series.
History the stamp represents: Jean Rabin Audubon (later known as John James Audubon) was born on April 26, 1785, in Les Cayes, Saint-Domingue – today’s Haiti.
Audubon was the son of a French naval officer and sugar plantation owner who had helped the American cause during the Revolution. As tensions in Saint-Domingue began to rise, Audubon’s father decided to move back to France and joined the Republican Guard.
Audubon and his siblings were raised near Nantes, France. It was here that he was renamed, Jean-Jacques. From a young age, Audubon had an interest in birds. He later recalled “I felt an intimacy with them… bordering on frenzy must accompany my steps through life.” Audubon spent his childhood roaming the woods, collecting and drawing eggs and nests.
When he was 12, Audubon’s father sent him to military school, but he got seasick and didn’t enjoy math or navigation, so returned home. Then in 1803, his father got him a fake passport to allow him to leave for America to avoid being conscripted into the Napoleonic Wars. It was at this time that he changed his name to the Anglicized form: John James.
Audubon then made his way to Mill Grove, near Philadelphia, where his father had purchased property years earlier to develop lead mines. Audubon loved his time there, as it gave him ample opportunities to explore nature and study birds.
During this time Audubon did the first known bird banding in the country – tying a string to bird’s legs to see if they returned to the same nesting areas each year. He also committed himself to painting birds more realistically than other artists before him had done. Eventually, Audubon opened his own nature museum, filled with birds’ eggs and stuffed animals he had taxidermied himself.
Audubon and his father eventually agreed that the mining business wasn’t working out, so he sold part of the land and went to New York to learn the import-export business. For several years, Audubon moved around trying his hand at different jobs while trying to provide for his wife and children. In 1812, he had to give up his French citizenship and became an American citizen.
During his business travels, Audubon always continued to study and paint birds. He would destroy older paintings to force himself to create even better images. By the early 1820s, Audubon was more dedicated than ever to his study of birds. He resolved to paint all the birds on the continent. Audubon used realistic poses and settings to paint, catalog, and describe the birds.
In 1824, Audubon went to Philadelphia to find someone to publish a book of his bird drawings. No one would, but one suggested he go to Europe. So in 1826, he sailed to England, where he was accepted as “the American woodsman.” His British hosts, particularly King George IV, loved his drawings and he eventually raised enough money to get his book published. Audubon’s Birds of America pictured 497 bird species on 435 life-sized, colored engravings made from his watercolor paintings. The pages were organized in a specific order, taking readers on a visual tour. The book was wildly popular, especially in Europe. Audubon became just the second American elected as a fellow in London’s Royal Society.
Audubon returned to America in 1829 to work on more drawings for his book. He also worked on a sequel, Ornithological Biographies, with William McGillivray, which detailed the life histories of each species. He continued to travel until his health began to deteriorate. Audubon died on January 27, 1851. In 1905, the National Audubon Society was founded “to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds…”
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