A Nest for Celeste: A Story About Art, Inspiration, and the Meaning of Home

John James Audubon was a self-taught artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. He was born on April 26, 1785 in what is now Haiti. His father, a merchant and enslaver named Jean Audubon, raised him in France. Audubon was fascinated with drawing and exploring nature from childhood. When he was 18 years old, his father sent him to manage a farm near Philadelphia. There he met Lucy Bakewell, whom he married in 1808. Beginning in the 1820s, Audubon set out to capture the birds of North America in lifelike portraits. The teenage assistant who appears in Cole’s fictionalized account of Audubon’s life has a historical counterpart. Joseph Mason spent two years with the artist and painted many of the plants in the backgrounds of Audubon’s portraits. During their time together, Mason and Audubon traveled from Cincinnati, Ohio, to New Orleans, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi. After Audubon secured financial support for his artistic endeavors in England, his paintings were printed in The Birds of America, which depicted over 400 different species. To this day, his works are celebrated “not only for their ornithological exactness, but also for their vitality and keen sense of design” (“John James Audubon.” National Gallery of Art, 22 Feb. 2024). Ironically, Audubon attained the lifelike quality of his portraits by killing almost all of his subjects and posing the birds’ bodies with wire armatures. His artistic methods give rise to the conflict and theme of Cole’s novel. Audubon died on January 27, 1851 at age 65.

In 1821, John James Audubon spent four months at Oakley Plantation in Louisiana. In exchange for “$50.00 per month plus room and board for him and his apprentice,” Audubon taught drawing and dancing to the owners’ daughter, Eliza Pirrie (“History.” Audubon State Historic Site, 21 Feb. 2024). Audubon’s time at the plantation was brief but highly inspiring to the artist. He worked on 32 different paintings during his stay. The plantation was built in 1815 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Today, 100 acres of the plantation form the Audubon State Historic Site. Visitors can tour Oakley House as well as the cabins that housed enslaved people. The Oakley House museum contains a permanent exhibit about the lives of enslaved people on the plantation, which displays artifacts, images, and some of the names of the people who were enslaved. In 2017, Oakley Plantation hosted an event by the Slave Dwelling Project. The project was founded by Joseph McGill, author of Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery and seeks to “deliver the message that the people who lived in these structures were not a footnote in American history” (McGill, Joseph. “Home.” The Slave Dwelling Project, 4 Apr. 2017). Just as the connection between the novel’s setting and the legacy of slavery needs to be addressed, John James Audubon’s “personal history as an enslaver, white supremacist, and critic of emancipation” should also be acknowledged (“John James Audubon.” Britannica, 14 Feb. 2024). Although Henry Cole does not mention slavery in his novel about Audubon’s time at Oakley Plantation, it’s important to understand the true historical context behind his fiction.