Classic bird paintings

Mallard painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits

John James Audubon painted the Mallard as plate 221 of The Birds of America (1827–38), under the name Mallard Duck. A free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org. The pair shown here is from John Gould's The Birds of Europe (1832–37), where the bird is called the Common Wild Duck.

Updated

A male Mallard with a glossy green head resting beside a brown female at the water's edge
Mallards, male and female, from John Gould's The Birds of Europe. John and Elizabeth Gould, The Birds of Europe (1832–37)

About this painting

This pair is plate 361 of John Gould's The Birds of Europe (1832–37), under the name Common Wild Duck, Anas boschas. Gould's later The Birds of Great Britain (1862–73) has another plate of it, the Mallard, or Wild Duck, drawn by Joseph Wolf and Henry Constantine Richter.

Audubon’s Mallard: plate 221, “Mallard Duck”

Audubon's plate 221 shows two males and two females. Walking in the woods one day, he met a mother Mallard leading her ducklings, he thought toward the Ohio. She hissed at him like a goose, and when his dog brought him the ducklings, she rolled on the ground in such distress that he called the dog off, gave back the whole brood and walked away. “A happier moment I never felt,” he wrote.

He found Mallards rare near Boston but far more plentiful in the West, and wrote that in Florida they were sometimes so many they darkened the air; a big flock rising from a flooded savannah sounded like rumbling thunder.

Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 3 (1835). See plate 221 free at Audubon.org.

More classic portraits, free to see

  • John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 385: “Mallard”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
  • John and Elizabeth Gould, The Birds of Europe (1832–37), plate 361: “Common Wild Duck” (Anas boschas) (the painting shown above). Free scan (University of Kansas Libraries)
  • Joseph Wolf and Henry Constantine Richter, for John Gould’s The Birds of Great Britain (1862–73), vol. 5, plate 15: “Mallard, or Wild Duck” (Anas boschas). Free scan (University of Kansas Libraries)
  • Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 12: “Mallard”, with Gadwall and American Black Duck. Free scan (Internet Archive)

About the Mallard

The oldest known wild Mallard lived at least 27 years and 7 months: it was banded in Louisiana in 1981 and found in Arkansas in 2008. That is a record from bird banding, not a typical lifespan. (Source: USGS Bird Banding Laboratory, 2025 longevity table.) How long do wild birds live?

Buying a print?

An original plate 221 is a hand-colored sheet about 26 by 38 inches, printed in Britain in 1827–38; many prints sold today are reproductions or small 1840s octavo prints. How to tell an original from a reproduction.

In a Birdfolio, the hardcover book of your own life list, this painting sits beside the Mallard with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.