AUDUBON & SONS

Though ornithologists cluck over the inaccuracies, John James Audubon's bird paintings have earned him a cozy nest in art history. His animal paintings are not so well known, and his sons--two able artists who grew up under J.J.'s great wing and stayed in his shadow--are practically forgotten. The three Audubons' major work was a series of 150 "Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America," begun in 1842 and finished six years later. Son Victor did the landscape backgrounds for many of them, and son John W. painted 72 of the animals themselves. The entire set will be reproduced next month in a book--Audubon's Animals (Crowell; $12.50) --which gives the sons their due.

Father Audubon took small animals for his province, urged friends to send him specimens preserved in jars of rum. Son John tackled the bigger game, made trips as far from their Hudson River home as Texas to get the creatures right. He painted in precisely his father's style, and so well that few could distinguish between their work. "My wish," he wrote Victor, "[is] that my name will stand as does my father's."

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