Natural Curiosity : Unseen Art of the First Fleet 9781742246789, 9781742234090

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n at u r a l c u r i o s i t y

Louise Anemaat is Head of Pictures Section at the State Library of New South Wales, where she has curated many exhibitions and lectured extensively on the library’s eighteenth-century collections.

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n at u r a l curiosity unseen art of the first fleet

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The purchase of the TAL & Dai-ichi Life Derby Collection has been made possible by the generous support of TAL & Dai-ichi Life and the New South Wales Government. The publication of this book has been made possible by the generous support of the Belalberi Foundation. A NewSouth book Published by NewSouth Publishing University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA newsouthpublishing.com © State Library of New South Wales 2014 First published 2014 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Anemaat, Louise, author. Title: Natural curiosity: unseen art of the First Fleet / Louise Anemaat. ISBN: 9781742234090 (paperback) 9781742246789 (ePDF) Notes: Includes index. Subjects: First Fleet, 1787–1788 – Pictorial works – Early works to 1800. Birds – Australia – Pictorial works – Early works to 1800. Plants – Australia – Pictorial works – Early works to 1800. Australia – In art. Australia – Colonization – Pictorial works – Early works to 1800. Australia – Pictorial works – Early works to 1800. Australia – Discovery and exploration – Pictorial works – Early works to 1800. Dewey Number: 994.02 Design Di Quick Front cover image: Artist unknown, Eastern native cat or quolls with a dead chicken, c. 1797. ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f. 5. Back cover images: Port Jackson Painter, Warratta. Grows to the Height of 8 or 10 feet (Telopea speciosissima) [detail], 1788–93, watercolour, 31.9 × 24.4 cm. John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 432; Port Jackson Painter, ‘Wattled Sandpiper’ (Vanellus miles) [detail], 1788–94, watercolour, 43.1 × 27 cm. John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 314. Printer Everbest, China This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

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Artist unknown, Yellow-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus funereus), c. 1797, watercolour, 42.3 × 26.7 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f. 19

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contents Introduction: The Derby Collection comes home 1 The collector

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2 A curious land

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3 Lambert’s bridge to Australia 85

4 The ‘Lambert Drawings’ 5 Collecting, curiosity and cargo 6 Natural curiosities 7 The botanical albums 8 Years of decline Notes

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Sources

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Acknowledgments Index

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7

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150 183 223

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Artist unknown, Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), date unknown, watercolour heightened with gum arabic, 42.3 x 26.7 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f. 80

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introduction

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There are a staggering 745 watercolour drawings in the Derby Collection.1 Bound into six volumes, drawn by unknown artists, they were created in the 1790s for natural historian, Aylmer Bourke Lambert. The collection is formally known as the TAL & Dai-ichi Life Derby Collection, to acknowledge the remarkably generous philanthropy of TAL, which was critical in securing the watercolours for the State Library. What TAL and the State Government of NSW, which also provided significant additional support to acquire the volumes, responded to were these bold and striking drawings of Australian birds, plants, fish, a handful of mammals and a single scene — so strange and wondrous, puzzling and new — that in 1788 seemed almost the stuff of fairy tales. As responses to those bewildering and captivating first encounters of the members of the First Fleet with Australia, the drawings are a time capsule that connects us with the unique presettlement natural world in the Sydney basin. I was standing on Sydney’s bustling Macquarie Street in March 2011 when I first heard about the proposed sale of these six volumes of drawings from the library of the 19th Earl of Derby. Mitchell Librarian, Richard Neville, and I were on our way to visit iconic pop artist, Martin Sharp, at his home when Richard mentioned, almost casually, that there had been an offer from Christie’s in London for the sale of a collection of First Fleet era drawings. Six months later, in London to research Lambert and his collections, I saw the collection for the first time. In a secure store room at Christie’s, St James; there was austere shelving, a desk and a computer. The

everyday noise and bustle of Christie’s staff going about their business could be heard up and down the corridor outside the door. A Christie’s staff member sat beside me, on chaperone duty, as I opened each volume. There was real pleasure and surprise in turning the pages, in the freshness of the next blaze of colour, the next bird or fish, the next delicate plant. Parrots and lorikeets, vivid, bright and colourful, appeared on page after page, twisting, ducking and preening. Perched on a branch, wings outstretched, a rainbow lorikeet ducks its head to reach for flowers on a branch. Again and again the First Fleet newcomers returned to them, marvelling at the startling differences to European birds. The great beauty of the many varieties was remarked upon in letter after letter written from the colony trying to explain the almost inexplicable to family and friends at home. Some drawings are highly finished, others are incomplete outlines that reveal the process of drawing. A black swan, the ultimate in exotic birdlife and a great novelty in Britain, glides through thin air, the water it should float on left unfinished. One of many Australian creatures that seemingly defied the unchanging laws of nature in a contradictory antipodean world, in 1788 black swans were seen in great numbers on the lakes and waterways around Sydney. There are black cockatoos, now rarely seen in Sydney. Owls stare out from the pages, wide-eyed. A duck seeming to plummet headlong from the sky is actually diving through the water and re-surfacing, its orientation skewed by being bound incorrectly into the volume. A snarling dingo, teeth bared, lies chained

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Artist unknown, Hairpin Banksia (Banksia spinulosa), c. 1797, watercolour, 31.5 × 18.5 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 31

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Artist unknown, Rainbow Lorikeet, c. 1797, watercolour, 42.3 × 26.7 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f. 11

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around the neck with a bone between its paws. Two quolls, one holding a dead chicken, drip blood from their jaws. Some are studies in movement. Many, drawn from fragile specimens, are studies in stiltedness, heads twisted backwards at odd angles, or bodies elongated and distorted. Lambert’s collection of Australian drawings is now part of the Mitchell Library collection at the State Library of New South Wales. Known now as the Derby Collection, it has been named for Lambert’s good friend the 13th Earl of Derby who purchased them after Lambert’s death in 1842. Underpinned by elaborate layers of benefaction and patronage, the story of his drawings weaves back and forth between Sydney and London. Marvelled at and puzzled over for 50 years, they were shared and copied, borrowed and exchanged between friends and associates, compared and examined and annotated, and filed safely away again. After his death, Lambert’s collection almost entirely faded from view until 2011. Lambert’s will had left his vast natural history collection to the British Museum on one condition — the Museum would be responsible for discharging any debts at the time of his death. With the collapse of many of Lambert’s financial interests in Britain and the West Indies, his debts were considerable. The Museum declined, leading to the sale and dissipation of a whole lifetime of Lambert’s natural history collecting in a mere five days. In the end, the proceeds, including the sale of Lambert’s country

William Derby, Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby, formerly Lord Stanley, 1837, oil on canvas Licence granted courtesy of The Rt Hon. The Earl of Derby, 2013

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F.O. Morris, Knowsley Hall, c. 1880, colour woodblock print, 19 × 14.5 cm (sheet) From F.O. Morris, A Series of picturesque views of seats of the noblemen and gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland ..., London: William Mackenzie, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

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estate and Mayfair house, still failed to cover what was owed. Derby purchased the drawings on the second day of the sale of the contents of Lambert’s library in April 1842. He also bought a volume of Lambert’s letters, his first commonplace book — a scrapbook recording botanical information and snippets — and botanical catalogues from his boyhood days of collecting and botanising and these were presented to the British Library in 1871 by a later Earl, the 15th. The drawings — the jewel of Lambert’s Australian collections — meanwhile remained, virtually unnoticed, on the

shelves of the Derby family estate, Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool city in England. Edward Smith Stanley was the son of the sport-mad 12th Earl of Derby who gave us the Oaks, named for his Surrey residence of the same name, and the Derby horse races, and the Derby hat. The 13th Earl, by contrast, was a man whose passion was not sport but natural history, who had himself amassed a large natural history library and huge collections of botanical, ornithological and zoological drawings. He built an extensive herbarium of dried plant specimens and assembled a large private zoo accommodated in the vast grounds of Knowsley Hall. Though family money had allowed him to indulge his principle interest in natural history, he was not entirely free in these pursuits until after his father’s death in 1834 which finally gave the new Earl, at 59, the freedom to quit politics, pursue his interests in natural history and build his collections in earnest.

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Artist unknown, Tawny Frogmouth (Podargus strigoides), 1790s, watercolour, 36.8 × 50 cm] Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 33

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Artist unknown, Mimosa (Acacia binervia), c. 1797, watercolour, 31.9 × 18.7 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 240

It was accepted practice to recognise people by the flattery of naming species after them, hence the Banksia named for Sir Joseph Banks. Such was the level of regard for Derby within the natural history community that at least 33 species, including mammals, birds, reptiles and insects, are known to have been named for him, bearing either the name Stanley, for Lord Stanley as he was styled during his father’s lifetime, or Derby after he assumed that title in 1834. The Australian tawny frogmouth (Podargus stanleyanus – now named Podargus strigoides ) and the now extinct white gallinule or swamp hen (Porphyrio stanleyi) of Lord Howe Island were named for him, as is the tammar wallaby (Halmaturus derbianus), one of the smallest of its species. Now still found on several offshore Australian islands, its habitat on the Australian mainland has been drastically reduced.2 Derby supported the work of French–American ornithologist and natural history artist, John James Audubon. John Gould, creator of the seven volume Birds of Australia (1840–48) was another of Derby’s artists. Knowsley Hall was a second home to leading natural history artist, author and poet Edward Lear who drew birds and animals from the Knowsley collections and menagerie. An acclaimed natural history artist whose talent was likened to Audubon’s, Lear’s most popularly remembered work is the nonsense poetry he created. Probably the best known of these, `The Owl and the Pussycat’ was written at Knowsley Hall with great affection for Derby’s grandchildren.3

Derby’s natural history collection grew to be large and important enough to warrant a permanent home and he began planning to preserve it intact long before his death. At first intending to pass his extensive specimens collection to the British Museum in London, he left it instead to the City of Liverpool ensuring that it would always remain together as a single entity rather than be dispersed through the various departments of the British Museum. As a result, Derby’s specimens became the foundation collection of the Liverpool Museum following his death in 1851.

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Artist unknown, (Solanum aviculare) The fruit of this call’d by the Natives Pommerral and eaten by them when ripe/Kammarral, watercolour, 31.5 × 18.7 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 80

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Artist unknown, Duck or Grebe, c. 1797, watercolour heightened with gum arabic, 42.3 × 26.7 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f. 73

alleged sightings of alligators in the Tank Stream; the very canny and convincing gold discovery hoax perpetrated by a convict; the loss of the Sirius off Norfolk island; the desperation of the captures of Arabanoo, of Bennelong and Coleby; the spearing of Governor Arthur Phillip. In such a small community it is easy to imagine that drawings, like stories and gossip, might also have circulated and been shared, repeated, honed, refined and copied in much the same way as stories. The common practice before mechanical reproduction, of exchanging drawings and making copies is at the core of confusion and uncertainty that surrounds Lambert’s unsigned and undated drawings relating to the early

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The newly built Liverpool Museum, established on the same model as London’s Natural History Museum, finally took delivery of Derby’s specimen collection in late 1860 when its removal from Knowsley Hall began. So large was his collection, its transfer to the museum continued over the course of a year. The Derby Library, including Lambert’s six volumes of Australian drawings, was not part of the bequest to the Museum and remained at Knowsley Hall for another 150 years until offered for sale by the current Earl of Derby, the 19th. The public emergence of Aylmer Bourke Lambert’s Australian drawings has been a little like finding that lost piece of a jigsaw. Comparing and considering Lambert’s drawings alongside other collections from the same period has shown them to be intimately interconnected. A number of the drawings were familiar from the iconic Watling Collection, compiled by First Fleet Surgeon-General John White and now held in London’s Natural History Museum. Sydney Cove was a place where the same stories and incidents did the rounds, appearing again and again in journals, memoirs and the many letters home: the whale that overturned a boat in Sydney Harbour killing several men; possibly Australia’s first urban myth, the two

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Artist unknown, Red-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus banksii), c. 1797, watercolour, 42.3 × 26.7 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f. 19

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years of the settlement.4 Quite the extent of the copying that took place in London and in Sydney Cove has not been fully appreciated but it quickly became apparent that the same images appear, again and again, re-used by different artists, part of different collections in different institutions. With so many drawings mirroring Lambert’s, at once alike and yet different, suddenly Lambert’s drawings held the promise of a story far larger than previously imagined. Copying has become a central part of this story, copying as a valid way of circulating drawings, as a way of responding to the fascination of the new, of feeding the appetite of people like Lambert, Derby and their extensive like-minded networks, to possess their own drawings, to assist their publishing ambitions, to fill

gaps in their knowledge. This was not about greed or avarice but about passion and knowledge. New technologies, such as digitisation, XRay Fluoresence and microscopy, have given us the ability to unlock new lines of investigation, to look more deeply at and into drawings without harming them, making it easier to track and cross refer disparate images across collections, to begin to untangle them, to help date them or suggest their primacy, to determine who was lending and who was copying. To demonstrate that New South Wales was a far more active and expressive cultural community than previously thought. This has the potential to subtly shift the very perception of ourselves as a nation. Collections such as Lambert’s have the capacity to shake up and challenge the stories we tell about the foundations of European settlement in Australia. History, rarely definitively one thing or the other, is rather a grab bag of ideas and behaviours. Lambert’s drawings are part of the evidence of a much richer culture in the colony than the more familiar stories of transportation, rationing, near starvation, punishment and abandonment suggest. They are direct evidence that in late 18th century New South Wales people found ways to rise above the isolation, despair and hardship, and retain a sense of humanity and connectedness with each other, and with home. They are evidence of a healthy engagement, for many, with unfamiliar and challenging surroundings. The story of Lambert’s drawings from the Derby Collection had seemed simple enough. There was no need to wonder how these particular drawings of

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Artist unknown, Crimson rosella (Platycercus elegans), 1790s, watercolour, 36.7 × 50.1 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 46

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Lambert’s had survived when so many others had not. Lambert and Derby were friends. Derby had an interest not only in natural history but also in the fate of his friend’s collection. So on the surface at least, it seemed a straight forward enough story to tell. In reality, it was far more complex and intertwined, and far more seductive than had seemed probable at the outset. It also alerts us to the precariousness of thinking we know history; that we know what happened, that we have all the information. These collections raise questions we might not have

as well as occasional petty jealousies, and enhanced each other’s understanding of the natural world. While tracing the stories of these drawings during the past year, the scientific, social and personal backgrounds of Lambert’s Australian drawings started to emerge. A prodigious natural history network was revealed, against the backdrop of the founding of a convict settlement and the dispossession of a traditional culture, on the edge of the known world. The Derby Collection, Lambert’s precious Australian drawings, arrived in Sydney, carefully packed,

Lambert and Derby were part of an alliance of collectors who shared specimens, seeds and drawings

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thought to ask, suggest possibilities we may not have considered. It is easy to recognise that Europeans were fascinated by Australia’s natural history, its exotic allure was strong in Britain. But at that point in history — with the settlement of New South Wales when two distant worlds collided — what was the impact? How did this express itself, how did people in Australia and in Britain, operate? How did they maximise their efforts? How did they respond to their new circumstances and surroundings, to what was presented, and what was possible to achieve? Lambert and Derby were part of an alliance of collectors, natural historians and gardeners who wrote to each other, shared specimens, seeds and drawings

cushioned and crated, at the end of November 2011, only a couple of weeks after I had left them at Christie’s and returned to Sydney myself. The last few days in London had been frantically busy, doing last checks of Lambert’s letters in the Linnean Society, the British Library and Kew Archives which I’d been using during the preceding weeks to build a picture of Lambert, his friends and associates, of how they operated, collected, published and shared information, drawings and specimens. I also, nervously, took Lambert’s drawings from Christie’s across central London to the Natural History Museum to look at his collection alongside the Museum’s iconic Watling Collection for probably the first time since the 1940s when research of Lambert’s

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drawings seems to have ended. And possibly the last time, now that the collections are again on two continents: First Fleet Surgeon-General John White’s Watling Collection compiled in Sydney and resident in London, and Lambert’s, partly compiled in London and now located in Sydney. It is, from beginning to end, a story with more questions than answers.

Artist unknown, Eastern native cat or quolls with a dead chicken, c. 1797, watercolour, 22.5 × 16.2 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f. 5

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Henry Charles Andrews, Lambertia Formosa, 1799, hand-coloured engraving, 25.3 × 20 cm (sheet) Henry Charles Andrews, The Botanist’s Repository, vol. 1, Pl. LXIX, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

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chap ter 1

The collector A gentleman whose zeal ... is unbounded J.E. Smith, in H.C. Andrews (1797), The botanist’s repository …, opp. Pl. LXIX

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On an October morning in Bristol in 1806, botany the whole Collection!!!! of the plants!!!!! Insisting the Gardener on board should see them all safe to Boyton enthusiast Aylmer Bourke Lambert hurried to the docks [Lambert’s country house] & remain with me until they off Kings Road. The West Indian Fleet had just arrived from Barbados and Lambert was anxious to be the first to were all safe in my stoves which they are now’, for the see the cargo of plants, animals and other natural history conveyance of such treasures could not be entrusted to treasures he knew would be on board. Commanding the just anyone.2 Lambert was impetuous and fleet was Francis Mackenzie, Earl Ay l m er determined with a remarkable social of Seaforth, returning to England reach. He would go to great lengths at the end of his six-year tenure as Bourke to secure a collection, effortlessly Governor of Barbados. negotiating his way through a Hearing Seaforth was on L a m b er t o n network of the great and the board, and ever happy to exploit t h e h u n t f o r powerful, the rich, the learned and his friendships and connections, the well connected. Here was a man Lambert ‘took great care to be with treasure whose extensive circle of friendships him in a very short time after he and acquaintances, and impulsive, enthusiastic manner, came on shore’ as Lambert wrote to his good friend opened doors. Accolades attached to Lambert during his James Edward Smith. Pleased Lambert ‘happened to be lifetime, a ‘gentleman whose zeal for the advancement there’, Seaforth appointed the next morning for the of … science is unbounded’, a man whose ‘labours to naturalist to board his ship, lying about ten miles off, that end, as well as his endeavours to render botany and view his haul of natural history. It was just what of universal benefit by combining the useful with the Lambert had been hoping for, as he had, of course, 1 pleasing … do him the greatest credit’.3 contrived to receive just such an invitation. And he was not disappointed. On board the Yet today, Lambert has disappeared from view. following day Lambert could hardly believe his eyes. The prediction made in the year of his death, that his There were 10 different kinds of live monkeys, all reputation ‘with the world in general’ would grow with supposedly perfectly tame. There were countless strange every advance in the field of botany ‘to which he devoted and exotic birds including ‘some hundred stuffed’. Most his whole existence’, did not come to pass.4 In glancing through any of the myriad natural exciting of all for Lambert — covering the whole deck — were 20 large boxes of around 800 living plants. But history publications from the late 1700s and early 1800s, it is surprising how frequently the words ‘from the best was yet to come. the collections of Mr. Lambert’, ‘liberally communicated ‘You might guess at my amazement & delight’, he wrote to Smith, ‘when [Seaforth] presented me with by Mr. Lambert’, or ‘from a drawing in the collection

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Artist unknown, Mountain devil (Lambertia formosa), 1790s, watercolour, 31.5 × 19.8 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 2098, vol. 6, f. 84

William Evans, Aylmer Bourke Lambert, 1801, stipple engraving, 38.1 × 32.7 cm Published by T. Cadell & W. Davies, after Henry Edridge, National Portrait Gallery, London

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of A.B. Lambert’ appear. Further compounding the intrigue is how often the material being described is Australian. Held in the highest regard by his contemporaries, Lambert was recognised during his lifetime by the naming of many species for him, including the whole Australian genus Lambertia. English natural history artist, Henry Charles Andrews described the Mountain devil (Lambertia formosa): of all the plants introduced from New South Wales that have flowered in England, ‘this unquestionably takes the lead for beauty’.5 In 1810 Lambert sat for miniature portraitist, Henry Edridge. A slightly built man, he is shown with his delicate hands tightly clasped on a folio of botanical drawings, almost as if the act of sitting for a long period without working on his collections required a great effort of will. One eyebrow almost imperceptibly raised, he has the air of a man slightly bemused and perhaps vaguely impatient with this exercise, a man with more enjoyable things on his mind. It is not difficult to imagine him poring over his drawings, making up his specimen sheets, turning pages, examining them closely, setting them aside again.6

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Artist unknown, [Red Honey-myrtle], 1790s, watercolour, 31 × 19 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 2098, vol. 5, f. 192

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Born at Bath in 1761, Lambert spent his formative years at the family seat, Boyton House in the Wiltshire countryside. When his mother, Bridget Bourke, died in 1773 Lambert was only 11 years old.7 His widowed father, Edmund, married Bridget Seymer in 1774 and this marriage contributed to Lambert’s interest in botany. As a boy he spent time A fa m i ly with his stepmother’s father, natural history enthusiast Henry Seymer senior, pa s s i o n the artist of many highly accomplished drawings of butterflies and moths.8 Under Seymer’s guidance, Lambert’s boyhood collections of flowers, shells and other treasures were begun. Seymer introduced Lambert to botany enthusiast, Dr Richard Pulteney — who became a lifelong friend — and the Dowager Duchess of Portland — whose extensive herbarium he would purchase many years later after her death in 1785. Lambert matriculated to Oxford University’s St Mary’s Hall in 1779 but, typical of the upper class, did not graduate. Nor did he undertake the conventional Grand Tour considered indispensable for the completion of a gentleman’s education. Instead, in 1782, he married Catherine Bowater Webster. Catherine supported his botanical pursuits and good naturedly overlooked the attendant boxes, crates, specimens and drawings which dominated their lives and their home. She reported light heartedly

John Rising, James Edward Smith, 1793, Oil Linnean Society, London

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Artist unknown, A Sketch of the Museum at Dartford in Kent belonging to Dr. Latham 1795, 1795, pen and ink Latham Collection, Vol. 1, Natural History Museum, London

Wales in 1825 where his collections became the basis of Sydney’s Macleay Museum. The Spanish treasures from Peru, Chile and Mexico, were the first of several consignments of the extensive collection of Spanish botanists Hipólito Ruiz and José Antonio Pavón. Smaller shipments continued to arrive until 1824.11 After receiving the second consignment in 1817, Lambert recorded his very great satisfaction in his Spanish cargoes which far exceeded expectations. He never ‘could have supposed it would fall to my Lot to be in possession of such a Collection’.12 Inheriting his father’s estate in 1802, in addition to his mother’s estates in Ireland and sugar plantations in the West Indies, Lambert was part of a privileged and wealthy elite in England with the leisure and the means to pursue their passions in an extravagant and all-consuming way.13 Their salons and personal libraries were the backdrop for the spoils of their collecting mania.

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to James Edward Smith in 1817, after Lambert received a large collection of dried plants from the Calcutta Botanic Garden through Danish botanist Dr Nathaniel Wallich, that ‘One really can hardly get into the Library for Boxes’. Lambert, anxious to let his friend know of his new collection but unable to tear himself away asked Catherine to write with the news while he, like an excited, indulged child, remained holed up in his library, surrounded by his newly arrived botanical riches.9 Catherine often wrote letters on his behalf to free him from the task. In 1816, anticipating her husband’s pleasure in the rich Spanish treasures that had just arrived at Boyton House, she wrote, at Lambert’s request, to inform entomologist Alexander Macleay referring to her husband fondly as ‘my Botanist’.10 Macleay, from 1795 a Fellow of the Linnean Society — an exclusive club where botanical knowledge and information were exchanged, news and no doubt gossip were shared — took up the post of Colonial Secretary for New South

Possibly by William Owen or Frederick Richard Say, Portrait of Alexander Macleay, oil, 74.8 x 62 cm (image) 889 × 76.2 cm (framed) Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

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Artist unknown, (Drosera peltata), 1790s, watercolour, 31 × 19.5 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 103

Artist unknown, Spotted Sun Orchid (Thelymitra ixioides), 1790s, watercolour, 31 × 19 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 201

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At his death in 1842, Lambert’s collections Though a reliable, congenial, well and library encompassed virtually the entire known informed and generous correspondent, Lambert world and numbered around 50,000 specimens, at was not the man of letters that Sir Joseph Banks was, least 130 collections and a vast array of living plants. nor did he have the royal connections or influence His library contained over 680 volumes and thousands on government of Banks. He is not associated with of drawings.16 heroic explorations of the Pacific, such as the voyage It was with the founding of with James Cook on the Endeavour the Linnean Society in 1788 that from 1768–1771, that cemented F ell o w s h i p Lambert, then 27 years old, first Banks’s fame. He did not dream really came into view. Lambert’s contributions to the up plans for the global transfer of plants and other society’s journal, Transactions of the Linnean Society, cover natural resources across the world, epitomised in 43 years, from 1794 until 1837, and include papers the breadfruit expeditions under the command of on zoological and botanical subjects. A founding William Bligh and instigated by Banks. Lambert member of the Linnean Society, in 1791 he was played no real part in the spread of the Empire in 14 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, was a Fellow of distant lands. He was nonetheless a person of note and it the Society of Antiquaries and a member of numerous quickly becomes apparent that he was not some foreign societies. mere dilettante but a heavy hitter, fully enmeshed His reputation as a botanist was cemented in the frenetic world of naturalists and collectors. with the publication in 1803 of his best known and A voracious collector, he was well connected, well most important work, A Description of the Genus Pinus. informed and highly sought after. His generosity Completed in 1824, it was illustrated in part by was legion: ‘Mr Lambert with whom we are always Austrian brothers, Franz (Francis) Bauer and his more incurring some debt of kindness’ was typical famous younger brother Ferdinand, later botanical acknowledgement of his beneficence towards natural artist on the circumnavigation of Australia (1801–03) 15 history friends and associates. by Matthew Flinders. He knew almost everyone of importance The Linnean Society was founded by Lambert’s and cemented his relationships through the ready close friend, fellow botanist James Edward Smith. exchange of botanical specimens and drawings, The society brought Lambert into contact with many passing on duplicate specimens and botanical natural history enthusiasts and collectors from all over information, and making his collections available the world. to anyone with an interest. The generosity of these Smith, a medical doctor, had purchased the exchanges led naturally into lifelong friendships. famed collection of renowned Swedish botanist, Carl

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Linnaeus in 1784 and brought it, controversially, from Sweden to England. It was this purchase, funded by his wealthy and indulgent father, that prompted Smith to found the Linnean Society, installing himself as inaugural president, a position he held for life.17 Admitted then as a Fellow of the Royal Society, Smith abandoned any pretence of practising medicine, which he had only studied anyway because it was allied to botany and so allowed him to pursue his real interest. The inaugural meeting of the new society was held amidst great excitement and anticipation in Smith’s London house in Great Marlborough Street on 8 April 1788 —10 weeks after the arrival of the First Fleet in New South Wales. Though president, from 1797 Smith generally preferred to stay in his country house, Lowestoft, at Norwich rather than attend to the meetings of the society he had founded. This usually left Lambert, as vice-president, to fill the Chair.18

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1 Artist unknown, Petrophile pulchella, 1797, watercolour, 31.5 × 19 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 20

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2 Artist unknown, Swamp lily (Crinum pedunculatum), 1790s, watercolour, 31 × 19.5 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 107

3 Artist unknown, Mimosa, 1790s, watercolour, 31 × 19 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 241

4 Artist unknown, Chlamysporum, Common fringed lily (Thysanotus tuberosus), 1797, watercolour, 31.6 × 19.5 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 9

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drove his collecting. He was generous, expansive It was in the green, book-lined reading and witty with a keen eye for detail and an almost room of the Linnean Society, one storey above child-like enthusiasm. And he relished the thrill of London’s bustling Piccadilly that, in September 2011, pursuing a collection. a picture of Lambert first started to emerge for me. What immediately became clear is that while In London for seven weeks to research Lambert’s Lambert’s collection of 745 Australian drawings was drawings before they were shipped to the Mitchell an impressive number, this was Library in Sydney, I started my but a very small part of his entire search by reading Lambert’s many Looking collection and represented only letters to James Edward Smith whose f o r the merest portion of his broad, large collection of personal papers, diverse and far reaching collecting correspondence and natural history L a m b er t interests. He did not limit himself to specimens are housed in the society, collecting within any particular territory or region. deposited after his death in 1828. Lambert’s friendly, Lambert had an obsession rather than a grand plan chatty, gossipy letters to Smith span 40 years from though it amounted, in the end, to the same thing 1787 until 1827 and attest to the easy, comfortable — acquiring one of the largest, most complete and friendship they shared. comprehensive collections of the world’s plants Eighteenth century gentlemen of science such possible. as Lambert, Smith and their associates necessarily Lambert had a gift for friendship. His friends lived in a world in which regular, fluent letter writing were always ‘my excellent friend’, ‘my celebrated was a required accomplishment. Lambert was no 19 friend’, ‘distinguished’, ‘indefatigable’ or ‘highly exception. At the centre of a widespread, energetic and productive world of natural history collecting, valued’, regardless of rank or class. He was at ease Lambert regularly exchanged specimens, drawings, with the privileged and the titled, with the elite of information, books and ideas within a network of likesociety, politics and the church. Yet he extended minded friends, acquaintances and correspondents. himself equally to gardeners, nurserymen and natural Lambert’s affable and informal style was history dealers. He actively promoted skilled lively and immediate. His infectiously exuberant, gardeners and petitioned his friends and spontaneous letters are windows into his passions, acquaintances for seeds and cuttings on their behalf. how he saw the world, what he valued, his way He described one gardener, Mr J Milne, who worked of operating, of acquiring, labelling, naming and for botanist, Richard Salisbury, and later at Fonthill documenting a whole world of natural history. They Abby, the gothic folly of William Beckford, as ‘… one reveal how Lambert looked at natural history and what of the best if not the best Botanic Gardeners in

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England’ and enthused that Milne could ‘make a broomstick grow’.20 Lambert’s letters are a template for the behaviour of a remarkably dedicated network of people. They are a roll call of the men, and occasionally women, throughout England and across the world who were almost single-mindedly devoted to the pursuit of natural history. Name after name after name of the famous, the well connected, the well-travelled or well-read appear on page after page of his letters. Every acquisition of drawings or specimens, every collector he met, every collection he acquired was quickly written up in a letter and reported to Smith, his enthusiasm and excitement, his sheer delight reflected in multiple underlinings and rows of exclamation marks. Full of the pleasure of the chase, reporting on collections he bought, or unexpected, unbidden acquisitions, his letters convey such a complete sense of the man, his activity, his passions, and motivations. He was both keenly acquisitive and enormously generous. He shared and exchanged specimens and plant cuttings, loaned books and drawings, and made his library and his collections available to anyone who was interested. Smith introduced Lambert to Sir Abraham Hume and Lady Hume — ‘we are old cronies’, Lambert wrote of his easy friendship with the Humes — who in turn introduced him to Lady de Clifford. Her Paddington

garden supplied Lambert with plants from New South Wales, and in 1808 she presented him with a collection of the ‘most beautiful Chinese Botanical Drawings I ever saw’.21 Lambert often breakfasted with Banks at his home in Soho Square and the two exchanged seeds and plants. Antiquarians George Annesley and Thomas Lister Parker, who indulged his taste for landscape gardening at Browsholme Estate in Yorkshire, were correspondents and friends as was Scottish diplomat and archaeologist Sir William Hamilton. In 1810, at White Knights near Reading, the country estate of George Spencer-Churchill, Lord Blandford who later became the 5th Duke of Marlborough, Lambert met William Wyndham Grenville, Prime Minister from 1806–07, who was also ‘remarkably fond of plants’ amassing a large collection including an arboretum, a living collection, of pines.22 Blandford extended Lambert’s network by introducing him to playwright and poet, Sir Walter Scott, and to Lord and Lady Essex at their home, Cassiobury Park in Watford, where Lambert became a frequent guest.23 Lambert shared an unlikely enthusiasm with Blandford. Typically the nobility and landed gentry employed gardeners and horticulturists to do the hard physical work of gardening, but Lambert and Blandford were both keen and skilful gardeners who chose not to rely entirely on staff and often indulged their handson love of gardening.24 Lambert often wrote to Smith

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Artist unknown, Christmas bell (Blandfordia nobilis), 1790s, watercolour, 31 × 19 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 111

sustainable. The expense of Blandford’s gardens, Lambert rightly concluded, ‘must be enormous’. In the space of only a few weeks, from Christmas 1805 until early January, Blandford reported to Lambert that he ‘had planted eighty five thousand of foreign Trees!!!!’.28 Following the death of his father, the 4th Duke of Marlborough, in 1817, Blandford succeeded to the title, moved to the family seat at Blenheim Castle and within two years it was over. In financial trouble from as early as 1800, Marlborough was bankrupt by 1819 with debts exceeding a staggering £600,000 and most of the gardens and estate were sold.29 Lambert received specimens from the famous Hammersmith nursery of James Lee and Lewis Kennedy, he received specimens from and contributed to the Royal Gardens at Kew, the Chelsea Gardens, the Brompton Gardens, and the Botanic Garden at Cambridge. The Twickenham garden of Isaac Swainson, a botanist with a particular interest in medical botany, supplied Lambert with many species of hardy exotics and he received plants from the Clapham garden of George Hibbert.30 In May 1801 Lambert wrote of his pleasure at learning he was to receive a collection — ‘I expect its arrival hourly’ — including Erica and Protea, from John Roxburgh who had been stationed at the Cape of Good Hope for five years to collect seeds and plants for the East India Company’s Bengal Garden.31 Lambert knew Scottish botanist William Wright; English explorer Mungo Park; Swiss botanist Augustin de Condelle, who first advanced the theory of species competing for space and resources which led to Darwin’s

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of hours, even days, spent gardening with Blandford at White Knights. Simply breathless with awe Lambert never saw anyone ‘half so fond of plants’ as Blandford; ‘we were generally at [gardening] from ten in the morning till twelve at night. It is his whole amusement & [he] understands it well’.25 Blandford’s gardens furnished Lambert with many fine specimens of rare plants, especially North American trees and shrubs. Apart from their obvious shared interest in botany and cultivating, the friendship between the naturally generous Lambert and the competitively acquisitive Blandford, known for his lack of generosity, might seem an unlikely one. Where Lambert offered and shared his collections with all interested parties, Blandford was renowned for the opposite. The archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew include a list of plants sent to the Marquis of Blandford in August 1796 with a cryptic postscript: ‘But Lord Blandford never added any plant to the Royal Collection’.26 Lambert, though, seemed to have met only with generosity. Curious, unusual and sought after botanical specimens were regularly delivered to Lambert from White Knights. In January 1808 Blandford delivered a ‘very handsome Botanical present, a Walking Stick … of Mimosa, longifolia, set with Gold with an inscription on it “Bot: Garden Whiteknights”. If any Cultivator deserves a Genus’ to be named for him, Lambert wrote to Smith, ‘it is his Lordship!’ 27 In 1804, Smith named the Australian flowering Christmas Bell Blandfordia for the Marquis. The gardens at White Knights were said to be rivalled only by Kew Gardens — if only they’d been

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Artist unknown, Long flowered mistletoe (Dendrophite vitellina), 1790s, watercolour, 31.4 × 19.2 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 112

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theory of natural selection; and Norwegian botanist, Professor Christen Smith, one of the most generous men Lambert ever met with, who gave him duplicates of plants from an expedition to the Canary Islands. In 1802 Lambert purchased a parcel of ‘very fine specimens, & plenty of duplicates’ from Dusky Bay in New Zealand, part of the herbarium collected by George Forster during Cook’s second Pacific voyage (1772–75), used for Forster’s publication of the Flora of South Seas.32 Collections arrived from Archibald Menzies, naval surgeon and botanist on George Vancouver’s fiveyear voyage (1791–95) to survey the largely unknown north-west coast of the American continent. In 1803, the news that a collection of specimens and plants of French botanist and gardener, Joseph Martin from Suriname, had just arrived in England and was to be auctioned the following week sent Lambert and Blandford hurrying off to inspect it. Returning to France, with the Napoleonic Wars in full swing, Martin’s ship had been captured by the British and ship and contents, including Martin’s collection, sold for prize money. Over the days that Martin’s collection was on view, an unbroken procession of hundreds of people filed past to view it, an indication of the excitement that exotic botany generated. Lambert spent two entire days with Blandford looking it over, and then bought the whole collection: ‘you can have no idea of their Beauty. There are six large Chests, several hundred in each, nothing can be in better preservation or better Collected.’33

Lambert’s goal for 1805 was to acquire the whole herbarium of German zoologist and botanist, Professor Peter Simon Pallas and the pursuit of it completely absorbed him for much of the following three years. Much favoured by Catherine the Great, Pallas continued collecting in Russia after her death in 1796 until the assassination of her son and successor, Paul I, in 1806. As well as his vast Russian collections, Pallas also had specimens of everything Banks had collected during Cook’s Endeavour voyage including a large number of Australian plants. From George Forster he had received duplicate specimens of everything brought back from Cook’s second voyage. Clearly a prize worth having, nearly three-and-a-half years of careful negotiations passed before, at great expense, Lambert was finally rewarded in May 1808 when he secured the collection. 34

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Artist unknown, Banksia sp., 1797, watercolour, 31.6 × 19 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 23

founder of modern Singapore Sir Stamford Raffles sent a collection of specimens from Singapore during the same year. When he returned to England in 1817, ‘quite the Lion of Naturalists’, it seemed to Lambert as if Raffles had ‘brought back everything with him but the island itself’. Raffles’s house was, Lambert reported, ‘quite a Museum’.37

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So large was Pallas’s collection that the final portion of it — ‘an immense Chest of plants … nearly a hundred & fifty weight’ — was not received by Lambert until the following year, in February. His work on the collection continued all year and in November 1809, he wrote that he had ‘been stationary here [at Boyton house] … & do not think of going to Town quite yet having plenty of employment here … I have all here & am at work on them daily.’35 In 1810 a coach loaded with the Chinese collection of Lady Staunton was delivered to his house in Grosvenor Street. It covered the whole floor of his library and was ‘the greatest collection except Pallas, I ever got. You shall have duplicates of all, as there are abundance’, he wrote to Smith. Her husband, Sir George, was Secretary to the first British Embassy to China under Sir George Macartney promoting science and commerce with China. Staunton also gave Lambert duplicates of all the specimens collected during the years of the embassy, 1792–94.36 English botanist and zoologist Thomas Nuttall amassed a large collection of plants and specimens during decades living and working in America from 1808 until 1841. In 1814 he gave Lambert ‘almost the whole of his living plants he brought home with him from the Banks of the Missouri, many of them very interesting & curious’. British statesman and

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Thomas Watling, Bottlebrush (Callistemon sp.), 1792–94, watercolour, 30.8 × 20 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 437

A man of generosity and purpose, eager to lend and share, Lambert’s life was crammed with more friends and like-minded associates throughout Britain and the world than it is possible to mention. Completely diverted by the endlessly satisfying pursuit of natural history, he was constantly in thrall to the latest addition to his collection. The intoxication that came with each new acquisition, the excitement of successfully striking a previously

were in use any day of the week, even late into the night. Visitors to his library, from all over the world, were met with Lambert’s ‘accustomed liberality’ and courtesy, shown the collections ‘without reserve’, and allowed to explore them for hours, sometimes days on end.38 A picture emerges of an engaged, focused man with a lively mind, the pace of his life peppered with the excitement of identifying and pursuing

A man of generosity and purpose, eager to lend and share collections and the drawn-out pleasure of unpacking and sorting them. New specimens were mounted on sheets of paper, labelled and classified, seeds were propagated, and living plants were warmed in the Boyton stoves. His mania for hunting out collections, bargaining and buying them, stayed with him throughout his long life. His collections speak of knowledge, an eye for natural history, and of the very nature of collecting itself. They show not only how intensely he exerted himself to understand natural history more broadly, and botany in particular, but how completely he devoted his life to it. He was a man constantly on the lookout for the next big thing in natural history. And in 1788, the next big thing was Australia.

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unknown exotic plant from a cutting, waiting for the first glimpse of its blooms, was wholly absorbing and occupied his every waking moment. The years followed a predictable rhythm for Lambert and his wife, Catherine. The winter months were spent in their London home at 26 Lower Grosvenor Street, in Mayfair, and in summer the household moved to Boyton House where, with the plant nursery fitted out with greenhouses, propagation plots and warming stoves for cultivating seeds and living plants, Lambert was equally in his element. Saturdays, in city or country house, were a kind of ‘at home’ with Lambert receiving visitors wishing to consult his library and his collections, but it is clear from his letters that his collections

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a curious land Paint cannot describe their Brilliancy Newton Fowell to his father, 12 July 1788

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Arthur Bowes Smyth, A View of the Tree at Botany Bay, wh yields ye Yellow Balsam, & of a Wigwam, 1788, watercolour, 12.9 × 23.4 cm Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, ML SAFE 1/15

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Artist unknown, A wattle (Acacia, possibly Acacia decurrens), c. 1797, watercolour, 31.1 × 18.5 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f.243

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of the men and women through the trees, disoriented On 21 January 1788, only his second day at and ‘surrounded by ferns on every side above my head’. Botany Bay, Surgeon Arthur Bowes Smyth made a Crawling gently through the unfamiliar undergrowth, somewhat inauspicious start to his natural history he eventually found a clearing in the wood and emerged collection. Having ‘wandered some distance into the ‘at least a mile’ from Botany Bay and made his way back, woods in search of Insects & other natural Curiosities’, relieved, along the beach.1 he wrote in his journal, ‘I lost myself & cd. not find Escaping some personal unmy way back … which threw me into T h e happiness, the whole enterprise in no small panic … before I cd. extricate myself from the Labarynth I had got into.’ a r r i va l New South Wales for Bowes Smyth was an attempt to forget that ‘Last year I was, At one point he found himself very close even at this Season [Christmas 1787], far very far, from to an Aboriginal camp place, listening to the voices happy, but I thank God comparatively speaking I am now happy, except wanting the presence of my relations and friends in England.’ Intended only for family and ‘intimate friends’, Bowes Smyth does not confide in his journal the reason for the unhappiness that has led to this point in his life but, clearly in search of distraction, it might explain why he threw himself into botanical collecting so quickly and so unprepared.2 Bowes Smyth, or Bowes as he was known in the colony, remained in Sydney only until April 1788 when he left for home on the Lady Penryhn, via Lord Howe Island, Tahiti and China, and arrived in England again in August 1789. For the ambitious Lieutenant of Marines, Ralph Clark, the decision to go to New South Wales had been a deliberate choice, an opportunity seized in the hope of gaining promotion, which he very quickly came to regret bitterly. His journal,

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William Bradley, Entrance of Port Jackson 27 January 1788, after 1802, watercolour, 13.2 × 19.3 cm From William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales, opp. p. 65, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, ML SAFE 1/14

… Port Jackson is the most beautiful place …’ And the following day, ‘I am much charmed with the place’.3 Even Surgeon General John White, a constant critic of the whole undertaking, described Port Jackson glowingly as the ‘Finest Harbor in the known World … forming beautiful bays & Coves on Every side with deep water everywhere for ships of any berthen …’4 Sydney harbour, wrote Assistant Surgeon George Worgan, is unequalled. Nothing that ‘has hitherto been described, equals it in Spaciousness and Safety, the Land forms a Number of pleasant Coves in most of which 6 or 7 Ships may lie secured to the Trees on Shore.’ The small harbour islands ‘are covered with Trees … The Whole, (in a Word) exhibits a Variety

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addressed to his wife Betsy, attempts to bridge the gap between them and bring her closer. Tormented by highly eroticised dreams about Betsy and their painful separation, Clark spent the entire long voyage overwhelmed, at times almost incapacitated, with homesickness and longing for his wife and their toddler son. His reader is quite unprepared then for the enthusiasm, the sense of astonishment of his first impressions of Port Jackson. As the ships passed through Sydney Heads, Clark was effusive, and no doubt relieved, at journey’s end: ‘blessed be to God that we have got Save to ane Anchor in one of the finest harbours in the world — I never Saw any like it

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of Romantic Views, all thrown together into sweet Confusion by the careless hand of Nature.’ But appearances can be deceiving. It would be well for the colony, wrote Worgan, ‘if these Appearances did not prove so delusive as upon a nearer Examination they are found to do’. Fine black soils luxuriantly covered with grass, and trees spaced out resembling meadows are interrupted by rocky, sandy or swampy areas, or impenetrable bush making clearing difficult and the land useless for grazing, agriculture or building.5

Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of John Macarthur of the New South Wales Corps, travelled as a free woman and arrived in Sydney in June 1790. She perhaps best captured the feeling of arrival. On first landing, ‘everything was new to me, every bird, every insect, flower, &c in short, all was novelty around me and was noticed with a degree of eager curiosity and perturbation …’ As the shock of the new faded into ‘calmness’, the novelty subsided, a sense of familiarity grew and, gradually, a sense of control and ownership. She later described her home and the country in

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Artist unknown, Brolga, or New Holland Crane (Grus rubicuda), c. 1797, watercolour, 27 × 42 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 3, f.15

Port Jackson Painter, A View of Sydney Cove — Port Jackson March 7th 1792, 1792, watercolour, 25.1 × 40.5 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 21

general in such glowing, beautiful terms that all at home in England were charmed by it.6 Amidst all this exclaiming or decrying, Captain John Hunter was one of many who noted the reaction of the Aboriginal people to their arrival. As the ships sailed into Botany Bay, Hunter observed ‘a number of Natives assembled on the South Shore & by their Motions seemd to threaten, they point’d their Spears & often repeated the Words Wara, Wara’. Hunter clearly recognised the repeated words to be an expression of defiance, a wish that the newcomers would ‘Go away! Go away!’.7

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Artist unknown, Australasian Shoveler or Hawksbury Duck (Anas rhynchotis), female, 1790s, watercolour, 26.7 × 42.3 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f.78

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Of those who landed at Sydney Cove in It was not the best start. With the threat of January 1788, only David Collins, Captain of Marines famine hanging over them from the beginning, and Deputy Judge Advocate, recorded any sense of Governor Arthur Phillip was forced to cut rations again the enormity of their undertaking writing of the and again. In February, mere weeks after their arrival, ‘strangeness of the events and occurrences’ they have he directed Lieutenant Philip Gidley King to found experienced which are ‘not often presented to the a settlement on Norfolk Island, a small island in the public; they do not, indeed, often Pacific Ocean over 1500 km northhappen’. It is only perhaps, ‘once in a east of Sydney, to take pressure off S u rv i va l century that colonies are established the primary settlement at Sydney in the most remote parts of the habitable globe; and Cove and relieve the public store. For some this further it is seldom that men are found existing perfectly in a separation felt like ‘a second transportation’.9 Of the almost 1500 people who arrived at state of nature. When such circumstances do occur, Sydney Cove with the First Fleet, roughly curiosity, and still more laudable sentiments, half were convicts. The remainder must be excited.’8 The eleven ships of were ships crew, naval officers and what has come to be known marines, including the wives and as the First Fleet had left England children of some; the colony’s first in May 1787 and on their arrival nearly nine chaplain and his wife; surgeons and months later they were already facing shortages. The assistants; surveyors; servants; and livestock had suffered during the voyage and once the Governor, Arthur Phillip. The ships in New South Wales the remaining cattle escaped reached Botany Bay on 18 January, and then into the bush where their progeny remained settled at Sydney Cove, 11 kilometres north, undiscovered until 1795, grazing in the deep inside Port Jackson, on 26 January 1788, Camden area of western Sydney still ‘an exceeding [sic] fine Harbour with many known today as Cowpastures. Seed coves all forming Inner Harbours brought from the Cape of Good … well supplied with Hope germinated enroute and water’.10 was useless on arrival; the soil was infertile; the crops that were sown failed in the summer heat or were washed away in Sydney’s violent storms.

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It is difficult to imagine this ‘once in a accounts and recording their impressions of New South century’ moment, the arrival in unknown territory but Wales in their journals and letters, more people were the feelings of homesickness, fear and uncertainty, the collecting, drawing and describing natural history in New South Wales than we can yet put names and faces to. excitement and wonder are not left entirely to our imaginations for Bowes Smyth, Worgan, Clark and It comes as quite a surprise, perhaps, to realise Collins were not the only ones to record their thoughts that from the very earliest days of the settlement, against and impressions on that first hot terrible odds and great physical T h o u g h t s a n d January day. Among the surviving and psychological hardship, in a contemporary records, the original, o b s ervat i o n s, place of punishment and with so often private, manuscript journals much ahead of them, there was and letters written by those who also space for creative responses. w r i t t en a n d sailed with the First Fleet occupy a Cultural activities not only found a d r aw n central place. foothold in the struggling colony, Publishers catered to public interest and curiosity they flourished. about New South Wales. By the end of the 18th Even before they arrived in New South Wales, century, published accounts by Collins, Phillip, officer George Worgan had hosted a piano recital on the Sirius of the Marines Watkin Tench, and Surgeon General inviting Arthur Bowes Smyth and Lieutenant John Watts John White were eagerly sought and reached an ever ‘to hear his Piano Forte’. Worgan later became Elizabeth Macarthur’s piano teacher, and Lieutenant of Marines widening readership in England and Europe. With constant demands for reprints and translations, First William Dawes taught her botany ‘to fill up the vacuum of Fleet publications straddled both the lofty world of many a solitary day’. She ‘made a small progress’ observing scholarship and popular culture and imagination. that ‘no country can exhibit a more copious field for Many predictions were made for the settlement botanical knowledge than this’.11 George Raper, Arthur Bowes Smyth, Newton Fowell, Phillip’s clerk Midshipman but in those first weeks and months their very survival Henry Brewer, Lieutenant William Bradley, Captain John was shaky and uncertain. Few, if any, would have Hunter and Captain William Paterson all mention their confidently predicted a prosperous, thriving settlement drawings. and the birth of a nation. And that’s quite apart from the whole world of Yet from the very beginning, despite unrelenting drawing, music, dance and storytelling of Indigenous criticism of the Governor, the harsh climate, and the Australians who could, Collins observed, ‘unbend, and challenging and unpredictable environment, despite the divert themselves with the softer amusements of singing food shortages and raging storms, and the overwhelming and dancing’.12 sense of isolation, more people were writing extended

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We may never know the exact number and identity of many of the artists and draughtsmen and possibly women who drew in the early days of the colony in Australia. That naval officers and convicts, relieved from the usual demands of convict labour, contributed to the artistic record is certain. Precisely who they all were is not. On 11 February 1788, Bowes Smyth recorded in his journal that he had ‘etch’d the likeness of the Tree wh. produces this Gum, [with] my pen, [which] I have subjoin’d, & is no very bad resemblance of it’. As a surgeon, Bowes Smyth, naturally enough, had an interest in the potential medicinal properties of plants. He hoped the balsam tree, collected near Botany Bay, would be effective in treating pulmonary disorders.13 On 1 March the same year, John Watts drew an emu ‘on the spot’ from a specimen shot near the settlement. While the original drawing has not survived, an engraving of it is included in the publication, The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay (1789). The skin was preserved in spirits and sent to England where it was posed ‘into attitude’ and presented to Sir Joseph Banks by the Home Secretary, Thomas Townshend, Viscount Sydney.14 A manuscript describing the voyage and the early years of the colony, prepared for publication by Lieutenant William Bradley, is illustrated with 29 watercolour drawings of places and events from the moment the fleet left England until Bradley’s return home in 1792. Bradley described the kangaroo and possum and noted their ‘having the false belly’. The flying fox, or large bat, he continued, ‘is common

here as are flying squirrels. The Birds we met with here are Gulls of many kinds, Black Swans, Eagles, Hawkes, Crows, Cranes, Curlieu, Heron, Bustards, Quails, Cockatoos, Parrot, & Paroquets of beautiful plumage … & met with a great variety of small birds extremely beautiful ... The Ostrich & Emew have been seen & one Emew killed, which was allowed to be very fine eating & the best Bird in the Country on account of its size.’15 Talented Midshipman George Raper recorded the voyage in 72 mostly signed and dated watercolour drawings that include a number of natural history subjects. Raper recorded plants, birds, mammals, fish and a reptile as well as events in the early history of the colony, topographical and ethnological subjects, and coastal profiles used to provide visual reference points that assisted with navigation. In that first July in the colony, everyone who could was frantically finishing off letters home as ships prepared to leave. Lieutenant Newton Fowell sent a long letter home to his father on the Friendship in which he described the lorikeets — ‘the handsomest Birds’ — of different colours and whose plumage is ‘very Brilliant so

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Artist unknown, Swift parrot or Red shouldered parakeet (Lathamus discolor), c. 1797, watercolour heightened with gum arabic, 26.7 × 42.3 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f.14

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Artist unknown, A wild Dog or Dingo of New South Wales, c. 1797, watercolour, 26.7 × 42.3 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f.1

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much so that Paint cannot describe their Brilliancy’. No artist, he wrote, could possibly do their beauty justice and certainly not his own efforts and so to compensate ‘for the inadequacy of artist or brush’, he sent his family a stuffed lorikeet specimen, along with his own drawings of Aboriginal spears and a kangaroo ‘to give [his family] a better idea of it’.16 Almost everything about their new environment intrigued. There was widespread curiosity about the ‘astonishing variety’ of birds, plants and animals: their colours, their ‘uncommonly beautiful plumage’, their song, the flowers, even how the birds, animals and plants tasted. Most birds they came across in New South Wales, observed Fowell, ‘are very good food’ with the

exception of cockatoos which make ‘very indifferent food’. Watkin Tench found the great variety of birds of ‘the most exquisite beauty’, and while for Tench the vegetables and wild fruit were ‘too contemptible to deserve notice’, others were more open. The head of the cabbage palm tree, observed Fowell, is ‘very good eating either as a Sallad or just as it comes out of the Tree’.17 Ralph Clark wrote of shooting a parrot, ‘the most beautifulness birds that I ever Saw …’ and promises to bring some home for his wife so she can see their beauty with her own eyes.18 Bowes Smyth thought kangaroo was ‘nearly as good to eat as venison’, so good that on 14 May 1788, on a ‘most delightful Excursion’ 12 miles up the harbour,

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Artist unknown, Black-necked stork (Ephippiorrhynchus asiaticus), c. 1797, watercolour, 26.7 × 42.3 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f. 79

surgeon George Worgan enthusiastically noted that they regaled themselves with cold ‘kanguroo’ pie. For Worgan all the animals, and the birds — waterfowl, ducks, teal, heron, cranes even the black swan — ‘make no despicable meat’. The meat of the emu ‘eats like young Beef, and one of its Side Bones was more than enough for four of our Dinners’. An unidentified fish, drawn by young seaman Daniel Butler, was said to taste like dolphin. William Neate Chapman, clerk and civil servant who arrived on the Gorgon with the Third Fleet in 1791, wrote to his sister humourously that he had enjoyed a pie ‘called Bowow Pye made of the native dog & very good it was’.19

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Artist unknown, Eastern Rosella, 1790s, watercolour, 49.6 × 36.3 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f.47

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Theirs was an enormously ambitious, risky commander of the First Fleet — of Phillip and of the and expensive undertaking and not everyone who colony’s chances, knowing and probably hoping that found themselves dropped on those far distant shores Nepean would not, in fact, treat his letter as private.20 Individual motivations for undertaking such an was happy about it. The colony was divided from the extraordinary and risky expedition were many and outset between those inclined to optimism about the varied and often highly personal. future of the settlement, and those P h i lli p ’ s ta s k For those mostly naval officers and who thought the whole undertaking Marines who volunteered for the was madness. The disquiet and wa s h u g e First Fleet, the inducements might anguish of their separation from have included promotion and pay, opportunity and Britain naturally worked on people differently fame. Some regretted their decision, some embraced it, depending on their circumstances, motivations, their and some found themselves in a situation merely to be character and what was at stake. endured. And for Phillip there was a lot at stake. Being Major Robert Ross, in charge of the Marines Governor of the convict colony in New South Wales in and later Lieutenant Governor of Norfolk Island, did 1788 was a burdensome, demanding and unenviable ‘not scruple to pronounce that in the whole world commission. Phillip was understandably motivated to there is not a worse country than what we have yet succeed and to convey the impression of success. His seen of this’. For Ross, it offered nothing of use or whole reputation depended on it, and he knew the substance. He sarcastically refuted Phillip’s favourable odds against success were considerable. representations of the colony as a potential ‘Empire Phillip, almost alone among his men, held on to of the East’. The colony, if allowed to continue, will a vision of what Sydney Cove could become, a place of ‘entail misery on all that are sent and an expense on strategic benefit to Britain, a thriving township with the mother country that in the days of her greatest wide streets and rows of houses. Privately though, he prosperity she was not equal to’. Everyone, Ross had concerns about how the vision would be realised asserted, with the exception of Phillip and Collins, ‘are with a motley assortment of naval officers, reluctant now earnestly wishing to get away from it’.21 Marines and disenfranchised convicts. Captain of Marines James Campbell wrote to His many detractors in the colony were outThomas Reynolds Moreton, Lord Ducie in July 1788, in spoken and fearless in their criticism of the Governor a fury. ‘Surely, my Lord’, he exclaimed, ‘Administration in their letters and reports home. In one letter will never persist in so romantick a scheme as the apparently written ‘only for your own private perusal’, forcing a settlement in such a Country as this at Major Robert Ross of the Marines wrote scathingly present appears to be. Not one thing can be found to Sir Evan Nepean — who had promoted Phillip as

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that ever promises to be an object of Commerce or worthy the attention of a Commercial Nation.’ Britain would save money by ‘feeding their Convicts at home, upon Venison and Claret, Cloathing them in Purple and Gold, rather than provide for them here the worst fare that can be thought of.’ Despite his exasperation about the viability of the colony, Campbell, too, was aware of the value of natural history drawings. He enclosed two watercolours in his letter to Ducie ‘taken from the life by that worthy character Captain Hunter, and by him given to me for your Lordship’. Frustratingly, he does not mention what the drawings might depict. Adding to the frustration, like almost all the drawings sent as enclosures with letters, Hunter’s are missing from Campbell’s letter.22 As in everything, there were two sides and Phillip doggedly continued to paint an altogether different picture seeing only ‘order and useful arrangement, arising gradually out of tumult and confusion’; there are ‘few things more pleasing’. The satisfaction he feels on witnessing this gradual transformation cannot be anywhere ‘more fully enjoyed than where a

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Francis Wheatley, Captain Arthur Phillip, 1787, 1787, oil, 30 × 25 cm (image), 43 × 38 cm (incl. frame) Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, ML 124

William Bradley, A View in upper part of Port Jackson; when the Fish was shot, 1788, watercolour, 18.1 × 24 cm From William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales …, opp. p. 120, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, ML safe 1/14

William Bradley, North Arm of Broken Bay New South Wales from an Island at the entrance Sepr 1789, after 1802, watercolour, 18.5 × 23.1 cm From Arthur Bowes Smyth, A Voyage to New South Wales …, opp. p. 92, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, ML Safe 1/14

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up with us’. It was ‘a country and place so forbidden [sic] and so hateful, as only to merit execration and curses for it has been a source of expence [sic] to the mother country, and of evil and misfortune to us, without there ever being the smallest likelihood of its repaying or recompensing either’.25 But while White clearly had an agenda regarding Phillip and the colony, he was also a pragmatist who recognised a unique opportunity when he saw it. With plans to publish his account of life in New South Wales and a deep interest in natural history, White opted to make the most of his posting and for the duration of his stay until he departed for home in December 1794, he was deeply occupied with the pursuit of natural history.

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settlement of civilized people is fixing itself upon a newly discovered or savage coast’.23 A fragment of John White’s manuscript journal from 1788 survives in the papers of Sir Joseph Banks, the original now lost. There were two reasons why the colony ‘will never answer the intentions of Government … first because it is at too great a distance from every trading Country & secondly it will never make any return to the Mother Country nor can it support itself independent of the Mother Country these 20 years’. White wrote of ‘the badness of the country’.24 With the passing of time White’s feelings only intensified. His criticism of Phillip bordered on disdain. In a published letter in 1791, he predicted ‘a miserable existence’. If no supply ships arrived, ‘the game will be

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Artist unknown, Sweet sarsaparilla (Smilax glyciphylla), c. 1797, watercolour, 31 × 19 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f.232

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A number of the colonists described and Quick to take advantage of any opportunity commented on Aboriginal ornamentation and rock to further his aims, White accumulated the drawings carving. Collins described instruments ‘ornamented of a number of artists, many unnamed, who have with rude carved-work’ created with a piece been grouped collectively and are now described as of broken shell. He observed figures of the Port Jackson Painter. Only one of White’s artists fish, clubs, swords and tree branches, all is identified, the convict Thomas Watling who was ‘not incontemptibly assigned to draw for White in the W h i t e a n d represented.’ Bradley colony. thought the Convicted of forging bank Wat li n g notes in 1788, tried and sentenced to transportation, Watling arrived in New South Wales in October 1792 and, as a trained artist, he unexpectedly found himself a big fish in a small pond. His earliest dated drawing is December 1792, of a fish at Sydney Cove, indicating that he started working very soon workmanship after his arrival. of canoes and weapons White was a prodigious collector in New South ‘all neatly carved and Wales where his interest in natural history was well ornamented’ showed ‘great ingeniousness’.27 served. Watling produced more than 140 drawings for Governor Phillip noted the people were ‘not his new master that included ethnographic subjects, without notions of sculpture’, commenting on Indigenous portraits and natural history drawings of the figures of animals, shields, weapons and even birds, plants and fish. people carved on rocks around Botany Bay and Port Watling gives us the closest description we Jackson, generally roughly carved but well enough to have of how he, or any of the early artists, might have ‘ascertain very fully what was the object intended’. worked: by daylight in the outdoors, and sometimes Fish were often represented and in one place the closely watched, for hours on end, by the Aboriginals form of a large lizard was sketched out ‘with tolerable who sat beside him, fascinated: ‘The natives are accuracy’. There was also ‘the figure of a man in the extremely fond of painting, and often sit hours by me attitude usually assumed by them when they begin when at work.’ Nor did Indigenous art escape Watling’s to dance, executed in a ‘still superior style’. Phillip notice: ‘Several rocks round us have outre figures puzzled that so much effort was put into ‘the arts of engraven in them; and some of their utensils and 26 imitation and amusement’ when the need for shelter weapons are curiously carved.’

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and clothing seemed so great but rationalised it in terms of the mild climate. Had the Aboriginal people been exposed to a colder atmosphere they ‘would doubtless have had clothes and houses, before they attempted to become sculptors’.28

despite, or perhaps because of, his frustration with life in the colony. In natural history he saw an opportunity to not only pass the time and distract himself, but potentially to profit from it. New South Wales inadvertently and fortuitously threw White a lifeline.

a conspicuously mismatched, belligerent and disgruntled pairing His eyewitness account of the settlement, A Voyage to New South Wales, was rushed into publication in England as early as 1790, illustrated with 100 engravings worked up from his collection of drawings and specimens by artists in England, including talented natural history artist Sarah Stone, and received by White’s friend and publisher Thomas Wilson in mid-1789.29 The same drawings and specimens were used in James Edward Smith’s Botany of New Holland (1793), the illustrations ‘taken from coloured drawings, made on the spot, and communicated to Mr. Wilson by John White Esq. Surgeon General to the Colony’, along with a large collection of finely preserved specimens ‘with which the drawings have in every case been carefully compared’.30 White seems to have been particularly dedicated to building his collections and to have accumulated an impressive number of drawings in possibly three collections. In May 1789 Dr Charles Blagden, Secretary

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White and Watling were a conspicuously mismatched, belligerent and disgruntled pairing. Neither was happy to find himself in New South Wales nor, indeed, in each other’s company and the situation did not bring out the best in either man; and yet each attempted in his way to make the best of a bad situation and to satisfy other, deeper yearnings that went to the core of their individual sense of self-worth. White’s mental and emotional escape route was to immerse himself in natural history

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Lieutenant John Watts, New Holland Cassowary or Emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae), 1788, engraving From John Watts, The voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay ..., opp. p. 271, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, RB/Q991A/7

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George Raper, The Settlement on Norfolk Island, May 16th 1790, 1790, watercolour, 26.4 × 41.9 cm Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, ML SV8/ Norf I/4

reported in the London Star newspaper as presented to Lady Hamond as a token of White’s regard for his patron and former captain, Sir Andrew Snape Hamond.31 In London in 1797, Aylmer Bourke Lambert received yet another large collection of drawings from White, together with his second unpublished manuscript.

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of the Royal Society and a long-term friend of Sir Joseph Banks, wrote to Banks of the arrival of ‘some drawings of objects in New South Wales, now in the possession of Sir Andrew Snape Hamond’. Blagden offered to accompany Banks to see the collection at Hamond’s house. This was almost certainly the same collection of drawings sent by John White that was

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Robert Dodd, Part of the Crew of his Majesty’s Ship Guardian endeavouring to escape in the Boats, 1791, aquatint, 47 × 62.5 cm (plate), 49.5 × 65 cm (sheet) Riou Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 742/2

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Artist unknown, Musk lorikeet (Glossopsitta concinna), 1790s, watercolour, 48.6 × 36.7 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f.41

Even in mid-1790, when the ships of the to Sydney Cove. They were ‘no more assured of the Second Fleet arrived bringing news from the wider welfare or existence of any of our friends than of what world and letters from home for the lucky ones, passes in the moon’. Only those who had experienced they brought few supplies, large numbers of sick, this unique form of separation and ‘felt the malnourished and dying convicts — estimated by anguish and distress of such a state’ could 33 Reverend Richard Johnson to be near 500 — truly understand it. and little sense of hope or relief. The 11 ships of the Third Fleet, s u rv i va l wa s which arrived from March until d i f f i c u lt August of 1791, brought another 2000 convicts. Today, these are mostly faceless people. All we know about many of them is a name or an alias, sometimes a crime and place of conviction, little more. Of the rank and file Marines and ships crews, we know even less. When news reached Sydney with the Lady Juliana in June 1790, of the loss of the special supply ship Guardian after it smashed into an iceberg at sea, it was bittersweet. The very existence of the Guardian proved the colony had not been forgotten after all, as they had feared, but the knowledge that the ship, its cargo and crew, and the opportunity to connect with the outside world were lost to them, was a breathtakingly cruel blow.32 Three years after their departure from England an anonymous Marine gave vent to their acute sense of displacement. So cut off ‘from all intercourse with the rest of mankind’, they had no idea of anything that had taken place in Europe since around March 1789 when the Sirius was last at the Cape of Good Hope and brought some old newspapers back

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Port Jackson Painter, The native name is Buroowang (Macrozamia, possibly Macrozamia communis), 1788–94, watercolour, 54.9 × 41.6 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. LS16

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For Reverend Richard Johnson, the sense of abandonment was excruciating. It was as if they had been ‘buried alive’, as if they had disappeared from view, that they had indeed sailed into the distance and off the edge of the world. The experience of those early days, regardless of rank or station, was a unique form of isolation.34 Today the impression remains of a nation built on near starvation, suffering, floggings and hangings, and a sense of utter futility. To an extent, that is certainly true but survival was not just a matter of food and shelter, it was also very much psychological. The profound sense of being dumped and abandoned, of being forgotten, was as dangerous to the viability and survival of the colony as were shortages of food and supplies. ‘In the name of Heaven’, despaired White, ‘what has the Ministry been about? Surely they have quite forgotten or neglected us, otherwise they would have sent to see what became of us, and to know how we were likely to succeed.’35

Yet some, like George Worgan, embraced the whole experience. He described his life in the colony to his brother enthusiastically, his account reading like a boys own adventure: ‘Our excursions put me in mind of your going a steeple hunting. We sometimes put a bit of salt beef or pork, bisket, a bottle of “Oh be joyful” [homebrew] in a knapsack throw it over our backs take a hatchet, a brace of pistols and a musket and away we go scouring the woods sometimes East, West, North, South.’ A rousing fire would be lit at night fall, boughs cut from trees to form shelter, and they would ‘open our wallets and eat as hearty of our fare as you of your daintees, then lie down on a bed which though not of roses yet we sleep as sound as you on your down.’ Even embittered convict artist Thomas Watling was captivated and challenged by what he found: Should the curious Ornothologist [sic], or the prying Botanist, emigrate here, they could not fail of deriving ample gratification in their favorite pursuits in this, luxuriant museum. Birds, flowers, shrubs, and plants; of these, many are tinged with hues that must baffle the happiest efforts of the pencil.36

Francis Grose, commander of the New South Wales Corps, who arrived with his family in 1792, was astonished to find himself surrounded by flourishing gardens and living in ‘as good a house as I desire ... since I have left England I have seen no place that I like better than this’. His farm produced ‘a sufficiency of every thing’. Even the climate, though

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Artist unknown, Persoonia, 1790s, watercolour, 31 × 18.5 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f.41

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very hot, was ‘not unwholesome’. There were plenty of fish and good shooting. His only complaint was that he was ‘rather farther from England than I wish to be’. In short, he could not have been happier.37 In Sydney during that first summer of 1788, European occupation was fragile, tenuous and strained. The experience of transportation to New South Wales had been a dramatic dislocation, exacerbated by distance and the sense of isolation, and the lack of familiar natural, environmental and cultural markers. New South Wales turned the world upside down. The newness and differences were striking. Eerie silences were broken by the ear piercing screeches and flashy colours of birds overhead, an assault to the eye and ear. There was the constant, exhausting irritation of insects, there were flightless birds, black swans, flowers without scent, and strange new animals to add to the disorientation. As time passed and the seasons changed, it was not autumn leaves that crunched underfoot but long strips of flaking tree bark. Trees oozed red or yellow gums and, vexingly, their heavy, hard timbers, rather than floating generally sank like stone. Some were captivated by these contrasts. Simply delighted, George Worgan boasted to his brother: ‘We have, and shall have all through the Winter green Trees in abundance to look at, that is more than you can say in your Winter Master Dick.’38 Others, like Robert Ross, could not wait for it all to end. And at home in England, Aylmer Bourke Lambert simply could not get enough.

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chap ter 3

lambert ’s bridge to Australia A land of wonder and delight Rev. Palmer to Joyce, 15 December 1794

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Port Jackson Painter, Warratta. Grows to the Height of 8 or 10 feet (Telopea speciosissima), 1788–94, watercolour, 31.9 × 24.4 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 432

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Port Jackson Painter, Kangaroo or the Pattagorang in the act of setting off on hearing a noise, Eastern grey kangaroo (Macropus giganteus), 1788–94, watercolour, 24.7 × 20.8 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 87

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In Sydney Cove, Governor Arthur Phillip into England as the ships of the First Fleet gradually left was surprised and a little bemused to learn that a live the colony and returned home. kangaroo sent home to England by Surgeon General John The many letters were accompanied by drawings White in 1792 had been valued at £500. And perhaps from New South Wales. A faintly bizarre collection of a little defensive: ‘surely it is not supposed in England countless assorted parrots, living and dead, seeds and 1 that I am in partnership with a Showman’. As a practical innumerable plants pressed and dried or growing in pots and ambitious naval officer with and tubs, tree gums, kangaroos T h e c u r i o u s a genuine interest in natural (one live and one stuffed), history, Phillip did not want the and a flying fox preserved in a n d t h e b i z a r r e gesture of sending live animals spirits, were among the first to England to be seen as mere frivolous entertainment, cargo received in England on the Alexander in May 1789. more akin to travelling sideshows of exotic animals than In the summer of 1789, Sir Joseph Banks wrote of ‘vast to the serious pursuit of science. additions to our Exotic gardens Principaly [sic] from In London meanwhile, Aylmer Bourke Lambert’s Botany Bay’, when the first returning ships reached reach had become increasingly international and England from New South Wales.2 following the arrival in Australia of the First Fleet in 1788, easily extended to New South Wales and the smaller, satellite colonies on Norfolk Island and, from 1803, Van Diemen’s Land. All of a sudden, specimens and drawings of birds and animals, and living plants and seeds were being shipped and exchanged across even greater distances and vaster oceans, transferred from the tents and rough wooden huts of New South Wales to England’s large, opulent houses and expansive summer residences, where they were unpacked and exclaimed over by Britain’s leisured classes. Lambert wanted, needed to be part of it. In July 1788 a kangaroo joey had been taken into the camp at Sydney Cove as a pet and a curiosity after the mother had been shot. Birds and animals living and dead, plants, seeds, skins, clays, pieces of timber and, importantly, drawings at first trickled and then poured

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Port Jackson Painter, Bottle brush (Callistemon citrinus), 1788–94, watercolour, 31.3 × 16.5 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 438

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Port Jackson Painter, Blue-bellied Parrot (Trichoglossus haemotodus), 1788–94, watercolour, 16.3 × 14.5 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 126

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John Doody, Cordyline Objecta, 1790s, watercolour, 47.5 × 60 cm Doody Collection, Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, DL PXX 1 Series 1, f. 4

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Lambert’s Australian natural history This manuscript, his second, written up by his interests had developed with the same boundless clerk in New South Wales, probably William Broughton, energy and enthusiasm he had always shown. The was never published and like the first, seems no longer greatest fillip to his Australian collections came in to exist. Hoping for Lambert’s support, White wrote March 1797 when John White wrote sending him, that the manuscript ‘contains many remarks as well as unsolicited, his manuscript for a second publication the progress made in Colony, which probably you may on New South Wales and his be able to hit upon some plan W h i t e ’ s entire extraordinary collection of of getting put into a shape not Australian drawings: the iconic c o n t r i b u t i o n s expensive, & still worthy of being given to the world’. Watling Collection named many A harsh critic of the settlement, White had years later not for White, the compiler and patron, apparently not held back in this manuscript. He had left but for Watling the convict artist. New South Wales in December 1794. Back in England, Lambert’s heart must have been pounding as about to take up another posting and no doubt mindful he read White’s letter: of future prospects, White attempted to retract some of Herewith you will receive a large rude his vehemence against Governor Arthur Phillip and the Manuscript, just as it was taken from my common place book by a young man who was my Hospital British Government, warning Lambert that ‘many pages Clerke, which my present situation prevents me of it were written when Hunger was very pressing, & being able to throw into any kind of form, or even it may cast some reflection on Government from the to copy fairly so as to make it legable [sic] distress of the moment: all that part I should wish to or understood … suppress as well as many remarks not very favourable … I wish you would recommend to me what is best to be done with the drawings, for to have to the settlement as I now trust from change of Men them all engraved would be so expensive that I (I mean Governors) measures will be pursued that could never carry such a work into execution. will very soon see it in a great degree independent of In New South Wales, of course, White had had the mother country.’ He concluded, hopefully, that access to the unpaid labour of convicts such as he ‘shall at all times rejoice to hear from you’.3 Watling, or junior officers to create his drawings. In addition to White’s drawings and manuscript, Back in England that resource was no longer Lambert’s Australian collections also included a very available to him and so the expense of having his large herbarium of plants from New South Wales, drawings copied to be engraved and prepared purchased from John White at an unrecorded date, for publication was now completely beyond his and divided and shared with his great friend, James means. Edward Smith.4

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William Owen, Colonel William Paterson, c. 1800, oil, 74 × 61.5 cm (image inside frame) Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, DG 175

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trained artist to arrive in New South Wales, John Lambert’s letters record his burgeoning William Lewin who is known to have produced at Australian network that eventually included not only least four watercolour drawings of the Gymea lily. John White, but also Governor Arthur Phillip, Captain The magnificent lily had first been sighted at Port William Paterson, Major Robert Ross, Lieutenant Philip Hacking, south of Botany Bay, in September 1800. Gidley King, Major Francis Grose and Banks’s botanical Lewin’s drawing had been sent to his patron, Dru collector in New South Wales, George Caley. Drury, in London who In fact, Lambert’s earliest G r o w i n g presented it at the Linnean drawings from New South Wales Society meeting. were possibly a small set of contribu tions 12 drawings, some unfinished, William Paterson had that seem once to have been part of Smith’s papers. also sent two drawings of the Gymea to Banks on They must have been received at least by 1793 when the Reliance in October 1800, and Hunter took live Smith published some of them in his publication that Gymea lilies with him when he returned to England same year, A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland. Now on the same ship. Paterson thought the magnificent known as the Ross Set, they have been annotated in pencil on the reverse, in Lambert’s hand: ‘from Major Ross’. Robert Ross, another harsh critic of Phillip, had been in charge of the First Fleet’s Marines and was Lieutenant-Governor of the settlement on Norfolk Island from March 1790 until his recall to Sydney Cove and return to England in December 1791.5 In the Chair of the Linnean Society in June 1801, filling in for the absent President James Edward Smith yet again, Lambert reported, uncharacteristically low key, that ‘Nothing particular had occurred …’ before his usual exhilaration overtook him. Nothing in particular, that is, except for ‘a Drawing of the most beautiful plant in nature perhaps, the New South Wales Lilly Doranthus’, the Gymea lily (Doryanthus excelsa). It is, Lambert enthused, ‘beyond anything you can imagine’.6 The drawing that so captivated Lambert had been created by the esteemed first free, professionally

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Artist unknown, Antherium (Buchardia umbellata), ca 1793, incomplete watercolour Ross Set, Linnean Society, London

lily would be a ‘great acquisition’ to gardens and nurseries in England.7 One of Paterson’s drawings of the lily might have been passed to Lambert or been copied for him, or there was possibly yet another drawing for a description by Paterson of the Gymea lily survives in an undated manuscript fragment among letters received by Lambert, noting that it has been seen in flower in August and in February: This Plant tho’ not a new Genus is certainly a distinct species I think of Crinum. grows from 12 to Twenty feet in height is found on Barran sandy Soil to Southward of Botany Bay & is generaly [sic] in the most exposed & high situation This plant and many more of the same kind were in flower in the Month of Agt [August] but it is probable from specimens brought from nearly the same place in the Month of Feby that they are in flower several months of the year.

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Lewin had further annotated and signed Paterson’s note, adding the observation that ‘The Natives Call this flower Commea & they Eat the root when it is Roasted as a Substitute for Bread with there [sic] fish & they make there Muttong & fish Gigs of the Stem’.8 William Paterson had a burning ambition to be admitted to that elite group, the Royal Society. Long-serving President Sir Joseph Banks, well known to weigh in strongly in selecting candidates for membership of the Royal Society, refused to be pressured when Paterson first raised the idea in 1790 advising instead that Paterson’s appointment to

New South Wales would be the ‘opportunity of doing something that would recommend you to their choice … as that country must abound with objects of Natural history utterly unknown to Europe’.9 Anxious to satisfy Banks and win the prize of membership of the Royal Society, once in New South Wales Paterson threw himself into natural history despite the ‘fatigues of collecting’. On arrival in November 1791, posted to Norfolk Island in command of the detachment of the New South Wales Corps, Paterson took convict artist John Doody with him.10 Little is known of Doody. Sentenced to seven years transportation in 1788, even his crime is unrecorded but the likelihood that he was yet another convict forger seems high. Doody arrived in Sydney Cove on the Barrington, the same ship as Paterson, and seems to have been well connected for he was known to Lambert’s good friend, renowned ornithologist, John Latham.11 While Paterson’s relationship with Doody seems to have been more sympathetic than White’s with Watling, this did not mean Doody was free in how he worked. His output was in service to Paterson’s personal aspirations and motivations. Paterson’s intention had been to publish a natural history of Norfolk Island and he set Doody to work drawing the botanical part first. His publishing plans were cut short by his sudden recall to Sydney Cove in March 1793 with only the botanical drawings completed. The birds and fish of Norfolk Island

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Artist unknown, Drosera probably Drosera spatulata), c. 1793, incomplete watercolour Ross Set, Linnean Society, London

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were, as a consequence, ‘out of my power to finish’. Doody’s botanical drawings were sent to Banks and described in detail in Paterson’s letters. Paterson’s collecting exertions, Banks’s connections and Doody’s drawings were intended to secure his entrée into the Royal Society. It was an honour that Paterson chased and that eluded him for almost eight years. He continued to send Banks reminders of his ‘earnest wish of becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society should you think me deserving of that honor’.12 Perversely in October 1795, after having suggested five years earlier that Paterson should wait and prove himself in New South Wales, when Paterson sent drawings and specimens home to Banks and other friends in the care of Major Francis Grose, Banks thanked him but thought admission to the Royal Society ‘during your residence abroad … to be impossible’.13 Given that Banks had been the main beneficiary of Paterson’s years of devotion to natural history, it seems churlish in the extreme for him to continue to dangle Royal Society membership before Paterson, ever just out of reach. It was not until 1798 that Paterson was finally elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Paterson’s efforts seem to have been far more appreciated in other

quarters. In the 1797 edition of The Botanist’s Repository, author and botanical illustrator Henry C. Andrews often referred to seeds sent to England by Paterson ‘to whose assiduous labours in collecting seeds, &c, the cabinets and collections of our natural historians are so very much indebted’.14 For Lambert, Paterson was a man ‘who would no doubt do all he could to oblige his Coll[ection]’. Lambert was also a beneficiary of Paterson’s efforts receiving seeds and a number of drawings by Paterson at an unknown date. Though inexpertly done, as Paterson himself was aware, they were bound in the volume of Lambert’s Australian botanical drawings and later passed into Derby’s library.

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Undoubtedly one of Lambert’s most An agreeable, sociable and easygoing man, Grose exciting Australian acquisitions came from Major was immediately at home in the colony and pleasantly Francis Grose. It is also one of the most enigmatic. surprised to find that ‘there is neither the scarcity that With much enthusiastic underlining and rows of was represented to me, nor the barren sands I was exclamation marks, even Lambert’s peerless capacity taught to imagine I should see’. Instead, ‘the whole for exhilaration seemed surpassed when, on 2 April place is a garden, on which fruit and vegetables of 1808, he wrote to Smith reporting every description grow in the Ac q u i s i t i o n s on a most amazing and unexpected greatest luxuriance’.17 Grose and his family had collection of drawings from New from Grose been extremely close to Paterson South Wales. and his wife. In 1793 Paterson had named the Grose Dining with Grose who ‘was a long time in New River for his commanding officer. The two shared a South Wales’, in fact just under three years, Lambert love of botany and a lasting friendship. Following had been thrilled to be shown ‘one of the finest Paterson’s death at sea in 1810, returning home to Collections of New South Wales plants I ever saw & I 15 England, his wife Elizabeth married Grose, now also never saw such fine specimens or so well preserved’. In New South Wales, Grose had ‘kept a widowed, in 1814. Elizabeth retained a number of Draughtsman one Jones constantly employed to Draw drawings from New South Wales including two, of for him, Birds, Fish, Animals, Plants &c I never saw the elephant fish and the saw fish, which also appear Drawings any thing like so well done in that Country. exactly replicated in White’s Watling Collection. The Birds I think as well done as any one here Could The identity of the mysterious artist, Jones, do them Many Nat. Size about two hundred & Sixty.’ who also seems not to have signed his drawings, has And then, the best part: ‘All of which just as I was continued to confound, his elusiveness exacerbated leaving the Room after looking them over, he gave me by his commonplace name. Tracing him has produced the Whole!!!!!!’ The thrill of such a moment was still few leads and many dead ends. By the time Grose 16 with Lambert as he wrote to Smith the following day. arrived in New South Wales at the beginning of 1792, By 1808, when Grose made this extravagant the Second and Third Fleets had already swelled the presentation to Lambert, he had not been in New colony’s population and skill base, and there was any South Wales for nearly 14 years. Commandant of the number of people by the name of Jones in the colony. New South Wales Corps, he had arrived at Sydney Cove Reverend Richard Johnson wrote of an elderly on the Pitt in February 1792 and in December took convict servant named Jones, a man who Johnson charge as Lieutenant Governor for two years following thought highly of and treated ‘rather as a Father than Phillip’s departure. as a Convict’. A man of good understanding who

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Port Jackson Painter, Little saw shark (Pristiophorus cirratus), 1790s, watercolour, 35 × 51 cm Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, V*/Fish/1

Port Jackson Painter, Elephant fish (Callorhynchus Antarcticus), 1790s, watercolour, 30.1 × 45.5 cm Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, V*/Fish/2

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John Doody, Freycinetia baueriana, 1790s, watercolour, 47.5 × 60 cm Doody Collection, Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, DL PXX 1 Series 1, f. 1

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Port Jackson Painter, Mr. White, Harris and Laing with a party of Soldiers visiting Botany Bay Colebee [missing word] at that place, when wounded near Botany Bay, 1790s, watercolour, 26.6 × 42.8 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 25

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‘once lived in Credit’, Jones had left behind a family ‘living in Repute’. Johnson had intended to have Jones returned to England when his sentence expired but in July 1794, after stealing from Samuel Marsden while a guest in Johnson’s house, Jones was instead ‘returned’ to Grose. Jones’s proximity to Grose and Johnson’s personal regard for him are intriguing and suggest the possibility of a reputable trade or profession that had

allowed him to support a family in England. 18 Collins described another Jones, a sergeant of the New South Wales Corps and a person ‘of much respectability’. Sergeant Jones’s general demeanour, wrote Collins, indicated an education ‘far beyond what is met with in this sphere of life in which he moved’. Another Jones marked out by unspecified talent and ability, he died in January 1795.19

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Port Jackson Painter, Method of Climbing Trees, 1788–94, watercolour, 31.6 × 19 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 75

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history Phillip sought to document once in New South In October 1802, Lambert had been the Wales. Phillip was acutely aware of his own shortcomings ecstatic recipient of the whole of the collection of in natural history and the need for a good botanist, ‘or Governor Arthur Phillip’s duplicate plants brought indeed any person that had an Idea of Botany, would be home in two large tea chests from New South Wales. a valuable acquisition to this Settlement’.23 He happily, and characteristically, offered to supply Despite his misgivings about the ‘great advantage Smith with any duplicate specimens. Lambert had, of a scientific eye’ that was of course, ‘been looking them G ov er n o r missing in Sydney Cove, over’ — how could he resist — and their reliance on ‘the and found some very good things A r t h u r P h i lli p ’ s unlearned observer’, among among them which were new to whom he numbered himself him and that ‘certainly are not in plants and probably Brewer, Phillip White’s collection’.20 Lambert makes no mention of having received attempted a fairly systematic documentation of the drawings from Phillip though he was very active in plants of the Sydney Cove area writing to Sir Joseph assembling natural history drawings. For many years Banks in April 1790 that he was ‘now getting drawings he had used his Midshipman, Henry Brewer, to draw of all the flowering shrubs in the Country’ which along 21 ‘excellent plans, drafts and views of places’. with his growing collection of dried shrubs, he hoped Phillip made a habit of presenting drawings would ‘when I return, give an information which my by Brewer, ‘who was skilld in drawing’, as gifts ignorance in botany prevents’.24 In December of the following year, as promised, to his patrons and to officials at ports where his he was ‘getting drawings of all the plants & Animals’. ships called. Previously a carpenter who had ‘learnd Now, though, he reported with a new confidence that Architecture’, Brewer had been clerk ‘to some great the drawings are ‘all done correctly, & about two hunconcern in the building line’ but he left, or was dred are finished’. He enclosed a drawing of a ‘War-retdismissed, for an unknown reason. Unemployed, tah’ along with several live waratah plants sent in tubs.25 he volunteered for the navy in 1778 and on his first Phillip’s certainty about the correctness of these ship became clerk to First Lieutenant Arthur Phillip. drawings, in contrast to his earlier reticence about the Brewer moved from ship to ship with Phillip until, in lack of botanical expertise, suggests something had 1786, he moved to the Sirius when Phillip was given changed, that someone had arrived with the Second or command of the First Fleet and appointed Governor 22 Third Fleet whose services gave Phillip new confidence of the colony in New South Wales. Brewer’s background in architecture would not in the quality and accuracy of the drawings he was have prepared him for drawing the wealth of natural accumulating.

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Port Jackson Painter, Native name Goo-ge-na-gan, Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), 1788–94, watercolour, 22 × 16.3 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 159

for the Late Admiral Governor Arthur Phillips [sic]’. Phillip’s extensive collection contained 441 drawings including Aboriginal portraits, animals, reptiles, birds, fish, plants with fruits, flowers, vegetables and heaths, in addition to three portfolios and two panoramic views. The buyers are unrecorded in the sale catalogue, and the dispersal and whereabouts of his New South Wales drawings are unknown.28

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One possibility might be a convict named Charles Smith. Sentenced to transportation for theft in 1787, he arrived at Sydney Cove on the Surprise as part of the Second Fleet in 1790. A skilled gardener, Smith was ‘Governor Phillips Gardener during his Stay here’.26 In 1804, Charles Smith wrote from the colony to Banks, opportunistically petitioning him for a commission as a collector in which case he asked Banks to send paper for specimen books and for drawing, bags and pins for insects and a ‘Case of In Struments for Dissection a Multiplying Glass [ie, magnifying glass] & Two Pocket Compasses’. He had, he wrote, ‘a Drawer here and a very good one’. It seems unlikely that Smith, a convict, was referring to Phillip’s Midshipman and artist Henry Brewer, a navy officer, in the possessive case even given Smith’s obvious gall in the demands he made of Banks. So was he referring to yet another unnamed artist? In April 1792, Phillip doggedly continued to ‘procure drawings of all the shrubs & plants, but the variety is so great that it will be a long time before drawings of the whole can be collected’, a view reinforced by George Worgan who observed that the number and variety of shrubs, plants and herbs ‘of this Country Tis beyond the Power, of Botanists to number up their Tribes’.27 With occasional exceptions, Phillip retained his New South Wales drawings during his lifetime. They were sold as part of his estate in July 1815, described as the ‘Valuable and Original Drawings of Natural History of New South Wales, Collected by, and Drawn

Artist unknown, Pattersonia, 1790s, watercolour, 31.7 × 19 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5 f. 10

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William Paterson, Wax lip orchid (Glossodia major), 1790s, watercolour, 28.5 × 15.1 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5 f. 203

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The work on the collection of plants received from Phillip had kept Lambert occupied for well over a month until, in November 1802, he was distracted by the news that the Investigator, under the command of Matthew Flinders, had ‘already accomplished the most important part of their object’ to survey the southern Australian coast from King Georges T h e F li n d er s Sound in the west to Bass Strait in e x p ed i t i o n the east. Flinders had begun his famous Well liked and highly regarded circumnavigation of the Australian coastline in — ‘He knows everything!’ — Flinders’s December 1801. Also on board the Investigator were distinguished naturalist, Robert Brown Austrian botanical artist, Ferdinand Bauer; botanical was known to be ‘extremely tender and landscape artist, William Westall, a cousin of of other persons’ feelings’. After he James Edward Smith; and botanist Robert Brown. returned to England in 1805, Lambert Between them, Bauer and Westall produced an and Brown formed a long lasting and impressive body of work. Bauer produced a series comfortable friendship. of ‘three hundred & sixty Drawings of New Plants, Over the years the two exchanged twenty of which are Banksias’, and Westall produced ‘much Confab on our friends & Foes.’30 possibly the first European copies of Aboriginal Like Westall, Brown had lost much of cave paintings from Arnhem Land. Westall returned his collection on Wreck Reef but saved to England, via China, towards the end of 1804. enough to enrich Lambert’s herbarium The following March, Banks introduced him to 29 with many specimens, especially of the Lambert. plants belonging to the family of the Almost all of Westall’s plant specimens Proteaceae. had been lost on Wreck Reef, the sand bank on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef where Flinders’ ship, the Porpoise, had been wrecked in August 1803. His drawings at least, and some bird skins from New South Wales which Westall presented to Lambert, had been saved.

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John Doody, Flax plant of Norfolk Island (Phormium tenax), 1790s, watercolour, 60.2 × 47.2 cm Doody Collection, Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, DL PXX 1, Series 1 f. 21

French naturalist Jacques-Julien de Labillardière presented Lambert with specimens from Van Diemen’s Land and many duplicates of his New Holland plants. Collected during the French expedition, under Antoine-Raymond-Joseph d’Entrecasteaux, they had been commissioned in 1791 to search for the lost ships of Gif ts from Jean-Francois de La Pérouse, one of the most highly regarded and best t h e F r en c h equipped of French voyages. The last recorded sighting of La Pérouse’s ships had been as they sailed out of Botany Bay in March 1788, six weeks after the founding of the British settlement at Sydney Cove.31 Labillardière identified and classified at least two new botanical species on this voyage: the Tasmanian blue gum and the kangaroo paw which he described as a ‘fine plant which nearly resembles the iris’. He also gave Europe its first large depiction of the black swan, one of many Australian creatures which fascinated Europe.32 In 1798 when Labillardière’s large collection of plants which had been gathered at the Cape of Good Hope, Madeira, and Teneriffe, was taken by an English ship of war and sold for prize money, Lambert did not hesitate to purchase them for himself.

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In March 1808 Lambert received a large way to New South Wales. King described him as cargo of plants brought on the Reliance from New ‘eccentric and morose’; Brown considered him, South Wales, by Philip Gidley King. Governor of with all his faults, ‘a most assiduous botanist’. the colony since 1800, King had resigned his post Paterson thought him ‘an original’.34 Caley, his mind ‘so fired’ with botany and in 1806 and arrived back in England in November entomology, and hoping to make a connection 1807. His natural history collection arrived on the with Banks, had opened his same ship and King was ‘so good as K i n g ’ s lobbying for a position in New to let me unpack them & have the South Wales in 1795 with the first pickings & I think I have added c o lle c t i o n observation that on the night he to my Collection from there above was born, 10 June 1770, Banks was fighting for his three hundred new species which I had not seen life on the Great Barrier Reef after the Endeavour had before’. Having spent days arranging them, Lambert been holed off the coast of Queensland. Eventually longed to show them to Smith who he was sure employed as a collector for Banks, he arrived in ‘would like to hear of this therefore have taken the New South Wales in 1798 and remained for 1st opportunity of writing’. 10 years. King’s wife, Anna Josepha, had also been a Lambert’s Australian contacts, their diligent collector of natural history while in New specimens and drawings, opened up a world that South Wales. She had brought home two cabinets was not only new to him, but was unlike anything which Lambert inspected, one of about 6,000 imagined in Europe before, a world where nothing insects ‘which I believe she intends parting with’ was quite as it seemed. The whole scene made a and another of shells ‘which she means to keep’. powerful, awe inspiring impression on Reverend Barely a week later, another ‘interesting Thomas Fyshe Palmer, one of the five Scottish Collection of New Holland specimens’ arrived, this Martyrs for Liberty convicted of sedition for time from King’s purser on the Reliance who gave supporting political reform and transported in Lambert ‘his whole Collection among which I see 1794. Palmer was enthralled by what he found: many I had not before got’, among them some 33 ‘it is a new creation; the beasts, the fish, the birds, beautiful specimens in flower. Lambert also purchased part of the extensive the reptiles, the plants, the trees, the flowers are all New South Wales herbarium of George Caley. A new. So beautiful and grotesque that no naturalist particularly rich collection, it contained more than would believe the most faithful drawing …’ It 50 species of Eucalyptus alone. Caley was another of was, exclaimed Palmer, truly ‘a land of wonder and those difficult, tricky characters who found their delight’. 35

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Robert Dighton, Philip Gidley and Anna Josepha King, and their children Elizabeth, Anna Maria and Phillip Parker, 1799, watercolour, 23.5 × 34.5 cm Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, ML 1244

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chap ter 4

the ‘lambert d r aw i n g s ’ A pretty turn for drawing John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales ... (1790), p. 107

running head first fleet

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Lambert’s reaction to receiving John White’s extraordinary collection of drawings in 1797 is unrecorded but it seems likely he would have done as he always did, written and shared the news of his astonishing new acquisition from New South Wales with his great friend, James Edward Smith. If so, the letter seems no longer to exist. Whether White intended to give the collection to Lambert, or merely to lend it until his manuscript and drawings could be published is unclear but Lambert seems to have wasted no time in having copies made of many of White’s drawings, now known as the Watling Collection, suggesting that the drawings might have been on loan to Lambert rather than a gift. Perhaps unusually for a man passionately committed to botany, albeit with a broader interest in natural history, Lambert had most of the birds in White’s collection copied, but only a far smaller number of the plants. Very few animals were copied, and a single scene — a view of Norfolk Island [image p. 87]— was among the copies. None of the ethnographic drawings and portraits of Aboriginal Australians from White’s collection were reused by Lambert.1 Lambert’s copy of the scene of Norfolk Island was taken from the original drawing in White’s Watling Collection [image p. 88 top] but despite its accuracy, the copy is not instantly recognisable. It faithfully reproduces the landscape and shoreline of the original, the rocks in the foreground, and the horizon studded with the distinctive Norfolk Island pine. The obligatory Union Jack is shown, fluttering stiffly in the midst of a small cluster of wooden huts. But it is the mood

as much as the detail of Lambert’s copy that has been altered, almost beyond recognition. By comparison with the original, the copy made for Lambert is simply bland. And Norfolk Island was anything but bland. Abundantly supplied with fresh food for the taking, the island was in many ways a ‘great blessing’. The Mt Pitt Bird that nested there every year was perfectly tame and became the main food source for the settlement, supplemented by regular, large catches of fish, especially snapper. Lieutenant Ralph Clark, now Keeper of the Public Stores, recorded the hundreds, sometimes thousands of birds killed and brought into the settlement daily. The supply was, in those first years, so plentiful that people quickly became complacent and the birds were often wantonly killed for sport without the urgency of hunger. The cumulative total of birds killed from 10 April until 13 June 1790, when Clark stopped recording it, was over 136,000.2 The scene of sunny calm depicted by Lambert’s copyist belies the island’s bleaker side. With its jagged fringe of reefs and variable onshore winds, Norfolk Island was a notoriously treacherous landing place for ships. Stripped bare of the people and the desperate activity, everything that made the original drawing genuine and dramatic, all evidence of the real moment of crisis recorded in White’s original, unsigned drawing has been removed, for only the original drawing captures the devastating wrecking of the Sirius off Norfolk Island on 19 March 1790. The actual moment of the wrecking had been preceded by five exhausting, blustery, grey days of

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Artist unknown, A View of the West side of Norfolk Island, taken from / the West side of Turtle Bay, c. 1797, watercolour, 26.7 × 42.3 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1

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heavy, surging seas. Captain John Hunter, in command, had desperately skirted the worst of the changeable onshore winds and avoided crashing the Sirius into the reefs. Using a lifeline from the ship, dragged through the pounding surf to the shore, a precarious partial landing of people and stores had been accomplished. On the sixth day, attempting to turn away and sail for safety as conditions worsened, the Sirius was beset by squally gusts, caught in currents and smashed on to the reef. In Lambert’s copy, the rocky reef, the scattered stores and floating debris being pounded in the surf have all disappeared. The ship’s crew, watching from astern as a group of people is dragged through the treacherous surf and over a ragged coral reef winched

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by a band of men balanced precariously on a rocky ledge, are all gone. The clutch of onlookers, watching helplessly as the devastation unfolded, has disappeared from the shore. The listing, dismasted ship, breaking up in the surf, also vanished. Even the drawing’s inscription has been reduced to record place but avoid any reference to actual events. With no understanding of the dire repercussions of the scene that left the colony with only a single ship, the Supply, linking it to the outside world, with no sense of the urgency and none of the overwhelming feeling of loss that was felt in Sydney Cove and on Norfolk Island, Lambert’s copyist,

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Port Jackson Painter, A View of the West side of Norfolk Island and the manner in which the crew and provisions were saved out of His Majesty’s Ship the Sirius, taken from the West side of Turtle Bay after she was wreck’d, c. 1790, watercolour, 30.9 × 38.7 John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 22

George Raper, VIEW of the WEST SIDE of SIDNEY BAY NORFOLK ISLAND Shewing the Method by which the ^CREW 7^ PROVISIONS & cc, & cc, Were saved from the WRECK of Hs. Ms. Sp. SIRIUS; as also a Boat Landing. Taken from the West Side of Turtle Bay, 1790, watercolour, 33.7 × 49.4 Raper Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Raper Drawing, no. 23

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I thought I knew the bones of this story, that White gave or lent his drawings to Lambert in 1797 who had them copied and bound into three volumes. Around 1799 he lent them to ornithologist John Latham who in turn made his own copies and added notes and annotations. A straightforward case of drawings lent and shared amongst a small circle of like-minded people in England. Instead, I keep coming to places where Lambert’s drawings intersect with other collections, either in the Mitchell and Dixson Libraries in Sydney, or more widely dispersed. There are copies in London in the Natural History Museum, a smaller number in the Linnean Society; in the National Library of Australia, Canberra; the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand; and in the Georg-AugustUniversity Library in Göttingen, Germany. There are, it becomes clear, not merely two copies but sometimes three, four or more, sometimes a series of copies and versions, each a reflection of the others. One of the great difficulties of these collections is that they have all, over time, become known by names that can be both confusing and misleading, and that only partially reflect their contents. Some collections are named for their most recent owner.

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working in a distant London drawing room, has pared the drawing back to a peaceful, benign scene of clear skies, still waters and little else. Given the significance of the loss of the Sirius and the court martial of Hunter that would inevitably follow, it is probably not accidental that yet another version of this scene exists, this time signed by the artist. It mirrors the drawing, owned by White and passed to Lambert, in every detail of mood, action and setting and it has been drawn by an eyewitness to the events it records — by Midshipman George Raper, [image p.88 bottom] part of the crew of the Sirius on that day.3 Which came first, the drawing owned by White, from which Lambert’s copy was made? Or the drawing by Raper? Or have they been created by two separate witnesses to the same events, working from the same viewpoint? At this stage, it is impossible to know. If there are not merely two versions — an original and a copy — of the Norfolk Island drawing, could there be more versions of other drawings? Could the exchange and copying of drawings extend beyond Lambert’s copies of John White’s collection? Rather than diminish our interest, this possibility amplifies the intrigue of Lambert’s collection.

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Sydney Bird Painter, Wedge-tailed shearwater (Puffinus pacificus), 1790s, watercolour, 47.7 × 29.4 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney PXD 226, f. 97

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often used an unusual triangular white eye highlight which features in two of the three drawings of African birds. It was never a trait of Raper’s signed work. The collection also contains 19 large watercolour drawings of birds, including many that incorporate botanical specimens; a large waratah; and 33 small botanical drawings of high quality. On the basis of style and technique, none is comparable to any of Raper’s signed works and only three or four subjects overlap with Raper’s drawings.6 Some of the bird and botanical groupings in the Ducie Collection are stylistically very similar to drawings titled Birds of Australia and South Seas, acquired at an unknown date by Alexander Turnbull and now part of New Zealand’s Alexander Turnbull Library. Each drawing is inscribed ‘E. Cane’, possibly for Eva, the daughter of collector Frederick Du Cane Godman. Four drawings are signed by Raper, one is signed by Sarah Stone; the remaining 61 unsigned drawings seem to have been attributed to Raper by Bernard Smith, possibly on the basis of the four signed drawings. Shared provenance can mislead and deceive. If the attribution to Raper was extended to all the New South Wales drawings once owned by Godman, on the basis of ownership rather than because of artistic or stylistic similarities, this could have resulted, over time, in the Raper attribution attaching itself to other comparable drawings such as those in the Ducie Collection. Many of the Ducie drawings in fact are so strikingly similar in style, technique and content to the drawings acquired by Alexander Turnbull

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Indeed the Derby Collection is one example. Compiled by Lambert, the Derby name obscures Lambert as the compiler of the collection. Historically his first three volumes of bird drawings have been known as the ‘Lambert Drawings’. Refreshingly straightforward, the Raper Collection, held at the Natural History Museum London, is named for the only artist represented in the collection. All but 10 of the 72 drawings have been signed and dated by George Raper and the collection is the benchmark for his work. It was purchased around 1877 by collectors Frederick Du Cane Godman and Osbert Salvin and exhibited by them at the Zoological Society in London. The drawings were described by Salvin as from the voyage of the First Fleet and the settlement of New South Wales and included ‘views of Port Jackson, Norfolk Island (then covered with pines), and other places; several objects of natural history including a white Gallinule of Lord Howe Island, Port Hunter and Duke of York Island’.4 This is the first mention of the Raper Collection historically and while Godman and Salvin do not record where they obtained it, it is possible that the drawings might have been acquired from Raper descendants.5 Like the Derby Collection, the Ducie Collection of drawings has also been named for its aristocratic previous owner, Thomas Reynolds Moreton, Lord Ducie, whose great interest was ornithology. Though attributed to Raper, the Ducie Collection holds work by at least three or more artists. One, the artist of three African birds, is likely to have been William Hayes, an ornithological artist employed by Ducie, who

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from Du Cane Godman, that they could be said to be copies of each other. By comparison, they bear little stylistic similarity to Raper’s lusciously loose and sinuous drawing style. With the exception of the Raper Collection, hardly any of the known collections represent the work of a single artist only. In 1906, though, the entire collection of over 500 drawings compiled by John White, that includes signed drawings by Thomas Watling, was named the Watling Collection by Richard Bowdler Sharpe, a Keeper at the Natural History Museum London. Watling remains the only artist in the collection who can be identified with certainty. The remaining drawings in the collection, created by possibly at least five other artists, have since been grouped anonymously as by the Port Jackson Painter. In the same way, a volume of 100 unsigned drawings and another 10 loose works, are known collectively as by the Sydney Bird Painter although the volume contains drawings which are predominantly the work of one, possibly two, skilled artists, with a smaller number, perhaps less than five, the work of a less skilled but unnamed artist.7 The personal sketchbook of John Hunter, titled Birds & Flowers of New South Wales drawn on the spot in 1788, 89 and 90, contains 100 watercolour drawings. Mostly drawn by Hunter who ‘has a pretty turn for drawing’, five are drawn by free settler artist John Lewin who arrived at Sydney Cove in 1800. Hunter copied, inexpertly, from the drawings of other artists including artists in the Ducie and Alexander Turnbull Collections.8

Another album, owned by Robert Anderson Seton, contains 89 very close copies of ‘original drawings by Captain Hunter, late of the Syrius’. Anderson’s less competent copies often lack the decorative detail of Hunter’s. Appointed ensign in the New South Wales Corps by Hunter, Anderson was in New South Wales by at least 1800. His letters reveal an interest in natural history.9 Of course the history of these collections is much more than a chronology of drawings. From this their story can only be incompletely told and partially understood. The chronology of drawings can be exceedingly difficult to unravel. The intricacies and intersections, reuse and overlap between collections of drawings make it challenging to determine the so-called original, if one drawing can be said to take precedence in this way. The provenance, the history of ownership, of every collection goes cold at some point, usually frustratingly early, and in the absence of signatures or dates, the devil is often in the detail. Which drawings might be the originals and which the copies can perhaps no longer be reliably determined. Clues to a possible genealogy exist though, increasingly with these collections, I found myself wondering whether primacy really mattered.

Sydney Bird Painter, Young Mt Pitt Bird, 1790s, watercolour, 48 × 30cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney PXD 680, no. 3

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the Sydney Bird Painter drawings are copies, one from Copying did not mean creating the other. But which? identical drawings. It meant there was a strong Only two Sydney Bird Painter drawings are dated. correlation, a conformity between some or all A single drawing, of two spotted quails, dated June the elements in a drawing. Copies might easily 1792, is a unique image, not repeated in any other be compositionally different but still be copies. A collection [image 1 p. 95]. The wonga pigeon is dated copyist might break down elements of an image and December 1791 [image 2 p. 95]. create several drawings to reflect the C o p i e s, a r t i n It appears copied and of the same various elements in the original; or date, in the Watling Collection several smaller drawings might be t h em s elv e s where it has been drawn quite copied and combined into a single stiffly and unnaturally posed by one of the Port Jackson work. Copies might incorporate all elements of a Painters, and described as a ‘White-faced Pigeon’ [image drawing or select only some components. 3 p. 95]. Artists might repeat elements of each other’s Neither drawing can be given primacy on date drawings, eliminate or substitute components even alone which, in any case, could equally have been added in repeating their own work. Detail might be lost in by a patron or later owner. The Sydney Bird Painter copies. Backgrounds might disappear, or reappear drawing describes the pigeon as ‘now seen for the first elaborated and embellished. time’, yet the version in the Watling Collection includes I began the long process, made easier through other textual information such as the Indigenous name, digitisation, of listing all the drawings and cross ‘Go-ad-gong’, missing from the Sydney Bird Painter. referring them to each other, where the collections Tiny variations — in backgrounds, in intersect and overlap and was amazed how often composition, or placement and orientation of the and in how many ways they replicated each other. subject, in textual detail and annotations — are all Despite differences in the skill of artists or copyists, clues to the working nature of these drawings. Typically, the frequency with which the drawings from the copies might emulate each other in positioning and various collections overlap, blend and merge and posture of the subject, such as the sequence of drawings then diverge again is intriguing and not a little of the banded goatsucker (owlet nightjar or Aegotheles baffling. cristatus) by the Sydney Bird Painter [image p. 96], the Of the 110 Sydney Bird Painter drawings, as Port Jackson Painter in the Watling Collection [image many as 51 relate strongly enough to drawings by 3 p. 97], in ‘Lambert’s Drawings’ [image 2 p. 97] and the Port Jackson Painter in the Watling Collection, finally in the Latham Collection [image 1 p. 97]. Though and therefore also to the ‘Lambert Drawings’, for it drawn by different people and consequently different to be considered that the Port Jackson Painter and

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1 Sydney Bird Painter, Spotted quail-thrush (Cinclosoma punctatum), 1792, watercolour, 47.3 × 55 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226 f. 4

2 Sydney Bird Painter, WungaWungee Pigeon (Leucosarcia picata). December 1791, 1791, watercolour, 47.7 × 29.7 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226 f. 81

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3 Port Jackson Painter, Whitefaced Pigeon (Leucosarcia picata), 1791, watercolour, 24.2 × 17.7 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 299

4 Artist unknown, White-faced pigeon (Leucosarcia picata), c. 1797, watercolour, 26.7 × 42.3 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098 vol. 1, f. 63

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Sydney Bird Painter, Owlet Nightjar (Aegotheles cristatus), c. 1790s, watercolour, 28.9 × 23.8 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226, f.79

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in technique, the angle and form of the supporting foreground branch or tree stump is replicated from one version to the next. As the copies progress, the supporting branch is reduced to a floating piece of stick simply pencilled in. It has not previously been understood quite how extensively and closely networks of natural history artists were working together, sharing and copying each other’s drawings from New South Wales. A New Holland snipe (Latham’s snipe or Gallinago hardwickii) [images pp. 98–99], drawn by the Port Jackson Painter and also the Sydney Bird Painter, for example, are such close versions of the same subject that the artists must have had access to each other’s work or been working together. Lambert subsequently had his own copy made. One composite drawing by the Sydney Bird Painter shows three birds including an eastern spinebill (Acanathorhynchus tenuirostris) and a yellow robin (Eopsaltria australis) [image pp. 100–1]. Each bird appears in separate, individual drawings in the Watling Collection [images 1–3 p. 101]. The remaining bird, a honeyeater, does not appear redrawn at all. The eastern spinebill appears

again, copied for the ‘Lambert Drawings’. The foliage in Latham’s copy has been omitted. Usually more detail in a drawing is an indication of primacy and, a little like Chinese whispers, something is lost each time a copy is made. A copy might change elements of a drawing or omit them altogether reflecting an artist’s ability, or merely make it, in the copyist’s view, more appealing. Or it might reflect a censoring of what is considered important. The loss of detail might be subtle, such as the disappearance through iterations of the object of a bird’s attentions: a tasty insect disappears just as the rainbow bird reaches for it. Sometimes, though, even the smallest omission is glaring, important and inexplicable.

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1 Artist unknown, New Holland Goatsucker, c. 1799, watercolour Latham Collection, Natural History Museum, London, vol. 5, f. 689

3 Port Jackson Painter, Banded Goatsucker, c. 1788–94, watercolour, 25.1 × 17.5 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 294

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2 Artist unknown, Caprimulgus vittatus, c. 1797, watercolour, 26.7 × 42.3 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f. 66

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Port Jackson Painter, New Holland Snipe (Gallinago hardwickii), 1788–94, watercolour, 18.4 × 17 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 313

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Artist unknown, ‘Scolopax longirostris’ (Gallinago hardwickii), c. 1797, watercolour, 27 × 42 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098 vol. 3, f. 1

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Sydney Bird Painter, Japanese snipe (Gallinago hardwickii), 1790s, watercolour, 47.5 × 30.1 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226 f. 92

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Sydney Bird Painter, 1. White-Naped Honeyeater (Melithreptus lunatus); 2. Eastern Spinebill (Acanathorhynchus tenuirostris); 3. Yellow Robin (Eopsaltria australis), 1790s, watercolour, 37.7 × 27.4 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226, f. 71

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1 Port Jackson Painter, Slenderbilled Creeper (Acanathorhynchus tenuirostris), 1788–94, watercolour, 21 × 14.6 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 181

3 Artist unknown, Certhia tenuistris … Slender-billed Creeper, c. 1799, watercolour Latham Collection, Natural History Museum, London, vol. 3, f. 405

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2 Artist unknown, Certhia tenuistris, c. 1797, watercolour, 42 × 26.5 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney PXD 1098, vol. 2, f. 80

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1 Port Jackson Painter, Variegated Bee eater, Indigenous name ‘Dee-weedgang’, c. 1788–94, watercolour, 21.2 × 19.2 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 165 2 Artist unknown, Merops ornatus … Variegated Bee-eater, c. 1799, watercolour Latham Collection, Natural History Museum, vol. 3, f. 368 3 Artist unknown, Merops ornatus, c. 1797, watercolour, 42 × 26.5 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 2, f. 28

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Sydney Bird Painter, Merops ornatus, 1790s, watercolour, 47.5 × 29.5 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney PXD 226, f. 73

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Sydney Bird Painter, Red Wattle-Bird (Anthochaera carunculata), 1790s, watercolour, 46.7 × 29.5 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226, f. 60

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Port Jackson Painter, Wattled Bee-eater, Indigenous name ‘Googwar-r’, 1788–94, watercolour, 33 × 22.4 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 166

Artist unknown, Wattled Bee-eater, c. 1797, watercolour, 26.7 × 42.3 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f. 37

There are also correlations between the Ducie Collection and the Sydney Bird Painter drawings. In one sequence, of the dollar bird (Coracias orientalis), the Ducie [image 1 p. 107] drawing appears as a reversal of the Watling Collection [image p. 106 top]; or, of course, it could be the opposite. Of different sizes, they are unlikely to be tracings of each other. The angle of the head in the Sydney Bird Painter’s version [image p. 106 bottom] has been changed slightly; only the Ducie version and Hunter’s copy [images 1 & 3 p. 107] include the insect, the bird in the Watling Collection completely focused on the now missing insect.

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The Sydney Bird Painter has, for instance, drawn the wattle bird accurately with two wattles [image p. 104], one each side of its head. In all respects the version made for White, by one of the Port Jackson Painters in the Watling Collection, seemingly replicates it perfectly but for one critical detail, the omission of a wattle. This omission has been repeated in the subsequent copy made from it by Lambert’s artist. It is difficult to reconcile the possibility that the correct drawing, by the Sydney Bird Painter, could be anything other than the original.

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Port Jackson Painter, ‘Pacific Roller’, 1788-94, watercolour, 18.8 × 17.8 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 147

Artist unknown, Coracias orientalis, c. 1797, watercolour, 42 × 26.5 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 2, f. 83

Sydney Bird Painter, Dollar-Bird (Eurystomus orientalis), 1790s, watercolour, 47.5 × 29.6 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226, f. 8 n at u r a l c u r i o s i t y

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2 Artist unknown, Dollar bird (Eurystomus orientalis), 1790s, watercolour, 46 × 31 cm Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, E-327-f-017

3 John Hunter, Dollarbird (Eurystomus orientalis), 1788–90, watercolour 22.6 × 18.3 cm Hunter Sketchbook, National Library of Australia, Canberra, nla.pic-an3148833

4 Artist unknown, Dollar bird, c. 1800, watercolour, 28.5 × 23 cm Seton Sketchbook, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXA 914 p. 85

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1 Artist unknown, Dollarbird (Eurystomus orientalis), 1790s, watercolour, 47.2 × 28.4 cm Ducie Collection, National Library of Australia, Canberra, nla.pic-vn3579557

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Little is known of the art training scales of feet was also common. Yet drawings with received by aspiring naval officers as part of a suite of naval origins are perhaps easier to glean by omission, compulsory skills required for progression through by what was seemingly not taught rather than what the ranks of the Royal Navy. It was certainly basic in was. comparison with, for example, training at the Royal Presumably because it was not generally Academy of Arts and it is probably not surprising to required, naval drawings show little or no skill in find a professional artist, such as convict academic draughtsmanship. Life The art Thomas Watling, was more highly drawing, for example, was not trained than the officers who oversaw in the curriculum of the Royal a n d a ll i t Navy and those officers who did him. Copying the work of others to venture into this area show little i n vo lv ed learn and improve was part of a long skill or aptitude for it. Similarly tradition of art training which mostly began with there is little evidence that naval artists learned and copying, the purpose precisely to practise, refine and honed the technical conventions of representing perfect technical conventions and methods. Copying perspective. was a bread-and-butter skill not just in the navy but in More often than not, engravings rather than the art world more generally. paintings were used in copying exercises and Naval charts and coastal profiles had a specific the effect of this can be seen in many drawings and copies that originated in New South Wales. strategic rationale, to provide visual reference points to identify landmarks and assist navigation. Shading, volume and tone in engravings are built Practical rather than aesthetic responses to coasts and up through the use of spaced, tapering lines, or landforms, they were needed as exact, reliable copies by cross hatching. The effect of this can be seen for use by the Admiralty and demanded a high level in naval drawings which often replicate the effect of precision and accuracy. They were also politically of engraving lines rather than the more painterly charged documents, proof that inferred priority and technique of blending colour with a brush. conferred naming rights. All midshipmen received Blending can be seen in the work of the training in drawing coastal profiles and some, such as more skilled artist grouped under the Sydney Bird Raper and Hunter, developed a particular talent for it. Painter, suggesting the possibility that this was not A style of sorts emerged to meet these a naval artist. Similarly, the carefully blended colour requirements. Naval drawings often featured precise in the small set of botanical drawings in the Ducie frame lines usually in-filled with beige or pink Collection suggests a more trained artist rather than a watercolour inside heavy black lines. The inclusion of naval officer.

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Sydney Bird Painter, Cuculous, possibly Brush Cuckoo (adult and juvenile), 1790s, watercolour with gold leaf, 45.2 × 29 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226 f. 46

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1 Artist unknown, Cuculous plagosus … Glossy Cuckoo, c. 1799, watercolour Latham Collection, Natural History Museum, London, vol. 2, f. 280

2 Port Jackson Painter, Glossy Cuckoo, 1788–94, watercolour, 13.3 × 18.5 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 158

3 Artist unknown, Cuculus plagosus, c. 1797, watercolour, 27 × 42 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 3, f. 22

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Of course, all artists worked within their particular social, cultural and intellectual inheritance and especially those naval officers who were artistically aware or had a genuine interest or aptitude could not have helped but absorb something of the artistic and cultural legacy that surrounded them.10 The Raper Collection, for instance, once housed in a single volume, was titled on a decorative cartouche, drawn to create the illusion of a curled scroll: ‘Collection of Views Sketches and Natural

History in a Voyage to Botany Bay in 1787–1788– 1789–1791 & 1792 by Geo: Raper’. Classical elements such as scroll work and urns in Raper’s work reflect his absorption of aspects of the classical tradition. That he was confident enough to include the occasional classical allusion in his work suggests a deeper artistic sensibility and ability. Yet the drawings themselves are just one set of evidence to be mobilised into an argument alongside other clues.

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untested metallic leaf or paint, applied with varying A composition by the Sydney Bird Painter degrees of skill and expertise. [image p. 109] shows three birds: two golden bronze The Sydney Bird Painter made the most effective cuckoos (Chrysococcys lucidis) and a rufous whistler. and expert use of gold leaf to portray the iridescent Versions of two of these birds appear in White’s Watling colours in the wing tips of the common bronzewing Collection, drawn by one of the Port Jackson Painters. pigeon (Phaps chalcoptera) [image p. 114] and again in the What intrigues is not the deconstructed composition in brush bronzewing pigeon (Phaps elegans) the Watling Collection, but the Sydney G li t t er i n g [image p. 118]. Most beautifully, a Bird Painter’s use of gold leaf to drawing of the extinct Norfolk Island heighten the plumage of the two p r i z e s pigeon (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae spadicea) bronze cuckoos. Gold was not used in the corresponding drawings uses gold to accentuate the bird’s head, throat and wings. A unique, uncopied drawing, the Pidgeon of Norfolk Island of the same bird in the Watling Collection [image 2 p. [image p. 113 top], is a detailed watercolour drawing 111], in the copies in the ‘Lambert Drawings’ [image 3 with careful brushwork and gradation of tone, and p. 111] or the Latham Collection [image 1 p. 110]. This skilfully applied gold leaf. raises the question of whether the version with gold highlights might be the original, or a more finished Photographed by Kate Hughes, Garling final version. Conservator, State Library of New South Wales, detail from Common bronze wing Gold heightening was more usual in presentation (Phaps chalcoptera) (see p. 114) showing gold leaf on wing, micrograph photograph drawings intended to be given to patrons or to be sold, and the idea of it having been used in New South Wales seems astonishing but the surprise is that the presence of gold leaf and another leaf of a copper alloy, known as Dutch metal or schlag metal, is quite so widespread in natural history drawings of New South Wales subjects.11 George Raper was the only New South Wales artist who signed drawings that made use of metallic leaf or paint, and these all date from the years 1789 or 1790, though precisely what material he was using is not identified. In total, at least 20 birds, fish or insects in 17 drawings, across seven different collections include occurrences of gold leaf or Dutch metal leaf or other

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Sydney Bird Painter, Pidgeon of Norfolk Island (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae spadicae), 1790s, watercolour with gold leaf, 46.9 × 30.1 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226, f. 84

George Raper, Pigeon of Norfolk Island Geo Rape, 1790, watercolour with metallic leaf or paint, 46 × 31 cm Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, E-327-f-001

The Sydney Bird Painter’s use of gold in the common bronzewing matches similar highlights, in Dutch metal leaf, in the Ducie Collection [image p. 115 bottom]. Ducie’s artist has also embellished his drawing with reeds and a grass tree in flower. A third unsigned version of the same drawing from the Alexander Turnbull Collection [image p. 115 top] includes wing highlights in metallic paint or leaf. It closely resembles the version by the Sydney Bird Painter. The bronzewing appears again, without gold or other highlights, copied from the Ducie version to include the grass tree, in the sketchbook of John Hunter [image p. 117]. It has been further copied, minus background or foreground detail, for Alexander Seton [image p. 116 top]. Of all versions, only Hunter’s and Seton’s include Indigenous names for the plants or for the bronzewing, ‘gode-gang’.

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Sydney Bird Painter, Common bronze wing pigeon (Phaps chalcoptera), 1790s, watercolour with gold leaf, 27.6 × 36.6 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226, f. 82

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The presence of gold leaf in the Sydney Bird Painter’s brush bronzewing pigeon (Phaps elegans) [image p. 118] is again matched by highlights of Dutch metal leaf in the version of the same drawing in the Ducie Collection [image p. 119]. Both birds are shown in left profile, the Ducie drawing again embellished with the addition of botanical specimens. The third version from the Raper Collection is in right profile, signed and dated 1789 by Raper, and titled ‘Pidgeon of Port Jackson, natural size’ [image p. 116 bottom]. The bronzewing does not appear in White’s Watling Collection but has been recorded in Latham’s listing of that collection, and was published by him in his second Supplement to the General Synopsis of Birds (1801). It is one of the 24 drawings now missing from the Watling Collection. Another drawing of a Norfolk Island pigeon, again signed by Raper, dated 1790, appears in the Alexander Turnbull Library’s set of drawings and includes the use of metallic paint or leaf [image p. 113 bottom]. The Sydney Bird Painter has produced one final work that includes gold leaf, a beautiful drawing of a Hawksbury duck and drake or Australian wood duck

and drake (Chenonetta or Anas jubata)[image pp. 122–3], the wing tips of both birds embellished with gold leaf. The drake only has been copied in the ‘Lambert Drawings’ [image p. 121] and his copyist has also included highlights in a painted application of a brass-based material. Latham’s copyist [image p. 121 inset] has not made use of gold. Neither the duck nor drake appears in White’s Watling Collection. How this drake drawing then came to be included in the ‘Lambert Drawings’, if it was not copied from White’s Watling Collection, is unexplained but raises the possibility that Lambert, at some point, might have had access to the drawings in the Sydney Bird Painter set. The idea that such rich materials, especially gold leaf, and the expertise to apply them would have been available in New South Wales might, at first, seem unlikely. Yet 18th century newspapers, trade cards, catalogues and advertisements confirm that gold leaf, shell or saucer gold, and Dutch metal leaf were readily available in London before the First Fleet sailed in May 1787. And so it is entirely possible that these materials could have been bought and taken to New South Wales.

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Artist unknown, Lord Howe Island Pigeon or Common (Forest) bronze wing pigeon (Phaps chalcoptera), 1788–99, watercolour with metallic paint or leaf, 46 × 31 cm Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, E-327-f-065

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Artist unknown, Common bronze wing (Phaps chalcoptera) with small grass tree (Xanthorrhoea media), 1790s, watercolour with Dutch metal leaf, 45.8 × 30.2 cm Ducie Collection, National Library of Australia, Canberra, pic-vn3579136

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Possibly Robert Anderson Seton, ‘Gode-gang’, c. 1800, watercolour, 28.5 × 22.8 cm Seton Sketchbook, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, DXA 914 f. 69

George Raper, Pidgeon of Port Jackson … Geo: Raper, 1789, 1789, watercolour with metallic leaf or paint, 46.2 × 32.8 cm Raper Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Raper Drawing, no. 46

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The technique of laying down gold leaf in watercolour drawings to imitate the appearance of gold shimmering through the paint was well known in Britain and Europe. The process of laying gold leaf on adhesive gum water to adhere to paper is described in manuals and booklets. So that it could then be painted over with watercolour, the leaf was ‘stroked over with a little thin Liquor of Ox-gall … by which means it will receive any Colour … and will hold it’. The gold shines through the colour so that ‘you … have Gold Greens, Gold Reds, and Purples, Blues, or what you please’ as seen in ‘some sort of Flies and Beetles’ and, of course, birds.12 This describes exactly the process seen under micrography of the gold highlights evident in the drawings of the Sydney Bird Painter. The same effect, using leaf of Dutch metal, can be seen in the Ducie Collection. So, both technique and materials were known before the First Fleet sailed, and were available for those who could afford them. For others, precious and semiprecious materials might have been borrowed just as the images themselves were borrowed and copied. Of course gold and Dutch metal leaf were also used for gilding and could have been included in the First Fleet for the application of protective gilding on woodwork of ships. Navy personnel, as well as convicts trained in related trades, might all have had the skill and expertise to apply gilding to wood or to paper.13 The presence of gold leaf, but also Dutch metal leaf, certainly marks these drawings out as something to be valued, something that was considered to be important. Their use is a clear sign of the value placed on New South Wales drawings.

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John Hunter, Common bronzewing (Phaps chalcoptera) and Forest grass tree (Xanthorrhoea media), 1788–90, watercolour, 22.6 × 18.3 cm Hunter Sketchbook, National Library of Australia, Canberra, nla pic-an3148903

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Sydney Bird Painter, Brush bronze wing pigeon (Phaps elegans). Natural Size, 1790s, watercolour, 37.6 × 28 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226, f. 83

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Artist unknown, Brush bronzewing (Phaps elegans), male, 1788–99, watercolour with Dutch metal leaf, 46.5 × 28.6 cm Ducie Collection, National Library of Australia, Canberra, nla.picvn3579101

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for the link between Lambert’s drawings and White’s Existing on the very edge of fine art, Watling Collection to become obscured. It was the natural history drawings in these collections are slowly reconstructed over decades of examination closer to working tools, to documentary records, and conjecture. John Gould, who than they are to art. As such, many have accrued had been shown the drawings during Lambert’s annotations in several hands over a number of lifetime, examined them again in 1843 with years. Annotations bear witness to the history of ornithologist Hugh Edwin collections, to past examinations and Strickland. Derby allowed later owners, building a picture of L ay er s Strickland to take ‘Lambert’s when and where and by whom, o f the drawings have been viewed, Drawings’ home with him and discussed and subtly altered over to skins in his own a n n o tat i o n compare them time, reflecting changing knowledge collection.15 In 1912, the three volumes were examined and interests. by obsessive Australian collector and ornithologist, The drawings accumulated by John White, and Gregory Mathews, and Tom Iredale during the the later copies made by John Hunter and Alexander production of Birds of Australia. Mathews returned Seton, for instance, include Indigenous names for to the drawings many times over the years until, the birds, plants or animals. Of interest to colonists in 1942, he and Herbert England, Librarian of attempting to establish relations and even dialogue the Department of Zoology at the Natural History with the Aboriginal people, it is of no interest to Museum London examined Lambert’s three volumes Lambert, for instance, in England and so has been of birds and the Watling Collection side by side. excluded from his drawings. During this inspection Mathews wrote the small Following Lambert’s death in 1842, Derby pencilled ‘Type’ labels in the Watling Collection, continued Lambert’s precedent of allowing access to some of which bear his initials, and England the drawings when requested. In 1842, he ‘kindly annotated the bird and mammal drawings with the lent’ George Robert Gray, the Keeper of Zoology corresponding volume and plate numbers from the at the Natural History Museum London, the three ‘Lambert Drawings’ in Volumes 1–3, finally cross volumes of Australian bird drawings ‘formerly in the referencing the two sets of drawings to each other.16 library of the late Mr. A.B. Lambert, from whence From about this time, 100 years after his death, Dr. Latham described most of the Australian species Lambert’s drawings seem to have been consulted published in the Supplement to the “Synopsis of 14 less and less. All but forgotten, their benign neglect Birds and Index Ornithologicus”’. It did not take long after his death though, turned out to be their salvation.

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Artist unknown, Anas jubata … Hawksbury Duck, c. 1799, watercolour, Latham Collection, Linnean Society, London, vol. 6, f. 1001

Artist unknown, Anas australis, c. 1797, watercolour with gold leaf, 26.7 × 42.3 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098 vol. 1, f. 72

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Sydney Bird Painter, Maned or Wood Duck and Drake, Hawksbury Duck and Drake or Australian Wood Duck and Drake (Chenonetta jubata), 1790s, watercolour with gold leaf, 45 × 57.5 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 680 f. 2

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chap ter 5

collect ing, c u r i o s i t y a n d ca r g o A thousand thanks Aylmer Bourke Lambert to James Edward Smith, June 1801

Port Jackson Painter, The black Swan the size of an English Swan Native name Mulgo (Cygnatus atratus), 1788–92, watercolour, 24.3 × 19.3 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 351

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In the late autumn of 1799 a remarkable sight greeted the settlement at Sydney Cove. His Majesty’s Ship Buffalo, newly arrived from England, glided to its anchorage in the cove and its figurehead was a giant, carved, wooden kangaroo.

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Josiah Wedgwood, Sydney Cove medallion, original issue, 1789, White clay bas relief, 5.6 cm (max. diam.) Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PM 133

As well as taking the colonists by surprise, judge-advocate David Collins observed that this ‘very much amused the natives, who could have had no idea of seeing the animals of their country represented in wood’.1 And while it might seem fanciful, even quaint, it actually speaks volumes for the practical and creative interest in Australian natural history, and for the extent and penetration of British awareness of Australia within the space of a decade. By contrast, almost 10 years earlier Arthur Phillip had received medallions fashioned by the Wedgwood pottery factory commemorating the settlement in Sydney. Made from black, brown and white Sydney clays, the medallions were neoclassical in style and celebrated British virtues of ‘Hope encouraging Art and Labour, under the influence of Peace’. They bore no reference to Australian native flora or fauna. It was too soon — a decade too soon — for such imagery. Phillip, though, was pleased with the gift and with Wedgwood’s use of the clays. His reaction was mildly triumphant: ‘Wedgwood has shown the world that our Welch clay is capable of receiving an Eligant Impression.’ He knew, or fervently hoped, that every contact with the idea of New South Wales in England would take hold in that nation’s collective psyche and lessen the chance of the colony being forgotten or subsumed by more pressing local concerns at home.2

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Noah’s Ark. Most, Vaux noted, fell victim to the severity For collectors in britain, New South Wales 3 of the weather and died.4 quickly became ‘… a mine of botanical novelty’. All The specimens, birds and animals that survived manner of things were sent from New South Wales and the trip from Sydney to England were usually destined dispersed among sponsors, patrons and beneficiaries in for private collections or travelling menageries and, London and throughout England. as with John White’s kangaroo, realised high prices It was far from easy transporting living plants when changing hands. When and animals on cramped ships. Plants the Buffalo returned to England in in tubs and pots shared space with li v i n g 1801 carrying two black swans living black swans, emus, parakeets m enag er i e s and three emus brought ‘with very and other birds, kangaroos, flying foxes, even the occasional dingo, in a n d n u r s er i e s great care … alive to England’, the emus were given to Sir Joseph addition to the ship’s dogs and cats, Banks, and the swans were given by First Lord of the and turned His Majesty’s ships into living menageries Admiralty, John Jervis, the Earl St Vincent, to Queen and nurseries. Keeping them all alive was challenging Charlotte who sent them to Frogmore Gardens, her and troublesome and demanded a lot of time, effort country retreat in Berkshire, east of London. One and space as well as food and precious fresh water. died in moulting; the other, not having had its wings Much of the deck and even the cabin space was used. clipped, ‘availed himself of the liberty they gave him Sir Joseph Banks stressed that the captain’s great … and was shot by a nobleman’s game-keeper as it cabin was the ideal location for plants where they was flying over the Thames’.5 were protected from salt spray, wind and variable In an attempt to minimise damage and loss, temperatures. detailed, precise instructions were sent on preparing Constant effort was required to water plants and specimens and caring for plants and animals. wash salt spray off leaves, feed animals and clean up Booklets of rules were published specifically after them. Animals died, specimens were vulnerable for collecting and preserving seeds from Botany to insect damage, seeds turned mouldy or sprouted on Bay. Banks wrote his own ‘Rules for Collecting and board. The attrition rate was high. When convict forger preserving Specimens of plants’6 detailing what to James Hardy Vaux was given free passage to return to collect, when and under what conditions — plants England in 1807 in exchange for working as Philip were to be collected on days free of rain, after the sun Gidley King’s clerk en route on another of the Buffalo’s had thoroughly dried the dew; flowers gathered when voyages, he described the kangaroos, black swans, an widest open; fruit when at its full size but before it emu, cockatoos, parrots and innumerable smaller birds began to ripen. Plant specimens were placed between that created a crush on board ship as resembling a

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Artist unknown, Masked Lapwing or Spur-winged Plover (Vanellus miles), 1790s, watercolour, 49.8 × 36.9 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 80

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leaves of paper, labelled, then repeatedly weighted down, turned and dried in the sun or near a fire. Seeds were to be gathered from mature plants in the afternoon of a fine day, dried for two or three days, and packed in cakes of melted wax or in dried leaf and other organic material. He also devised an elaborate method for numbering specimens, to overcome the risk of paper labels being damaged or separated from their muslin storage bags. The bags were to be sewn using double thread, one part coloured and the other white. Each knot on the white thread indicated units, a knot on a coloured thread indicated tens; a double knot on the coloured thread signified hundreds.7 It was an exacting and messy business. Collectors demanded that specimens arrive in excellent condition, not too damaged from being shot, properly preserved, boxed and sealed with tarred paper to prevent insect damage. Plants were elaborately netted to minimise damage especially from shipboard dogs and cats. Animal specimens were steeped in spirits or arsenic, and delivered with their internal parts separately preserved; eyes and tongues of birds were removed. Basic equipment was lacking in the colony. There were constant entreaties for paper for drawings and for drying specimens. Bottles were needed for specimens. Spirits were often scarce and the use of arsenic was not without danger. Collins recorded in January 1795 that a convict boy had died from swallowing arsenic. How he came to take it could not be accounted for.8

Port Jackson Painter, ‘Wattled Sandpiper’ (Vanellus miles), 1788–94, watercolour, 43.1 × 27 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 314

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For some ships captains it was all too much — too much effort, too much bother and inconvenience, too much valuable space that could otherwise be used for more conventional, commercial cargo from the Far East, as convict Charles Smith, Phillip’s gardener, found to his frustration when his carefully prepared treasures were refused on board ship. He lamented to Banks of several collections he had made and would have sent but the ‘Capt Whould not take them without I had Something from under your Hand to secure the freight of them. I Did apply to Governor Gross [Francis Grose] & Governor Hunter but they told me they Could not Compel any Capt to take them.’ Smith complained that Grose confiscated his collections, ‘all my Seeds Bores & Bag What Became of them I no not …’9

Despite the difficulties, the desire in England for natural history cargo from New South Wales was at fever pitch. Whereas in America the wonders of the natural world were held up as a key source of national pride, an opportunity to proclaim a distinctive national identity, and ‘showcase the wonders of their newly celebrated nationhood’, in Australia the broader context for natural history drawing and collecting was quite different. The pursuit of the bizarre, fascinating, even confronting in Australian nature was celebrated as proof of British achievement and success, of the power of the British nation.10

Sydney Bird Painter, ‘Masked lapwing’ (Vanellus miles), 1790s, watercolour, 52.7 × 44 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 680 f.1

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most highly regarded, it was not unusual for these to There was a curiosity value that placed be worked up later either by the original artist or, as drawings from New South Wales in high demand. we have seen from Lambert’s network of copyists, in Easily transportable and often enriched with field England by local artists who had not had immediate notes and observations, drawings were particularly experience of New South Wales or of what they were highly prized and sought after. They took up less space drawing. on crowded ships than living or dead specimens and An example of this is needed no further care, apart E a s e a n d Lambert’s drawing of a masked from being kept high and dry. lapwing [image p. 128], in They could be made p er i l s o f reality, a more squat bird than relatively quickly and completed with more detail later. As long t r a n s p o r tat i o n has been suggested by its upright, elongated shape and as the key materials — paper, posture depicted here. But where might the origin of watercolours, pencils — were readily to hand, the essential flaw in this drawing lie? drawings could be produced, stored and moved The artist has clearly made several attempts to about easily. If well and accurately done, they could correct the drawing as can be seen by the pentimenti, substitute for the real thing or for more inherently those changes and adjustments made in the drawing fragile and vulnerable specimens. to improve it, that are clearly evident here. He has reThese were generally not grand works. They positioned the bird’s head which, seen in right profile, were often meticulously detailed but could also lack has been raised, in fact elongating the bird even more. accuracy if painted from dead specimens or painted The over-painted correction, echoing the shape of by artists at home in England who had never seen a the bird’s head and slightly open beak, can be seen living example. There were many points where error to the right, just below the finished head. Changes could occur. Birds and animals, damaged when shot or of this nature are often an indication of the primacy trapped, or inexpertly preserved or mounted, resulted of a drawing and so will not usually be evident in in inaccurate drawings. Insects, gently squeezed to subsequent copies. death, were fragile and easily damaged. If drawn from The masked lapwing (Vanellus miles), drawn by life, birds or animals might be constantly in motion the Sydney Bird Painter [image p. 130] and again in or easily startled. Fish were a particular problem. Once White’s Watling Collection[image p. 129], has also caught and taken out of water they began to fade and been copied for Lambert. This series of drawings all lose their colour and sheen almost immediately. repeat the same fundamental flaw of elongating the While drawings made ‘on the spot’, drawn from bird suggesting the drawings were based on skins or life and first-hand observation, were probably the

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Probably Thomas Watling, Wattled Sandpiper, Indigenous name ‘Ban-ne-re-ra’ (Vanellus miles), 1792–94, watercolour, 21.6 × 20 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 315

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on specimens that had been wrongly prepared. As beautiful and accomplished as they are, the faults in the drawings imply that none of the artists had seen a living specimen of their subject. Yet it is known that the drawings from the Watling Collection were created in New South Wales. And yet Watling, in an unsigned drawing of the same bird, produced a more realistic and lifelike impression. Watling’s version does not appear to have been copied by any other artist. There was an established vocabulary of natural history drawing which included specific information about the subject. For animals this included notes about habitat, food, size and coat; for birds, their plumage, whistles and calls were noted, the form and length of the bill, details of crests, mandible, nostrils, legs, claws and scales, length and form of feathers, length of wing relative to tail, details of removed soft tissue such as tongue and eyes.11 The location of plants were recorded and the prevailing

conditions, sandy or swampy, near the sea, sunny, dry or wet conditions, the month of flowering, details of flowers, seeds, roots and foliage. In New South Wales there was also the complex linguistic task of naming a plant, bird or fish not only by its European equivalents, and possible Linnean nomenclature, but also by using, or adapting, Indigenous vocabulary, hence the now familiar names waratah, wombat, wallaby, corella and Gymea lily, all adapted from Indigenous names. Many, many others have been lost to common usage, often the only record occurs on natural history drawings. Drawings were an obvious way to pass on understanding of nature, one of the best, most economical and reliable means of transferring natural history knowledge around the globe.12 Drawings were the means by which a highly receptive British audience was introduced to exotic New South Wales. Not only did the drawings satisfy and feed off the wonder, intrigue and intellectual interest of Britain for Australia, they were the very foundation of British constructions of the antipodean world, the very source of ideas about New South Wales. Drawings informed perceptions of Australia, gradually led to a sense of familiarity and, inevitably, a sense of control and ownership. In time, this coincided with the gradual but systematic marginalisation of the Aboriginal peoples who lived there. As the colony grew and spread, new land grants and settlements pushed the Indigenous people further away from their traditional lands leading to frontier conflict and loss of life.

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form of escape, of succour for the mind. Drawings are never free of politics and Drawings of curious plants and animals were turning images to the service of the state to disseminate intended to capture things of interest, to instruct, to be information, to persuade, to sell an idea, was nothing admired and entertain.14 They were an integral part of new. What might seem astonishing is the realisation the way natural history was discussed, processed and that drawings of birds, fish, plants and animals could circulated. While we may today be charmed by their be turned to such effective use in a distant penal colony. apparent naivety, naturalists Phillip in particular was T h e p o li t i c s then took these drawings very aware of the political dimension seriously and trusted them of all this natural history activity. and sufficiently to determine species He saw it as a way of selling the p r ac t i ca li t i e s names. They are more than notion of New South Wales, of decorative images: they are hard securing support and holding the of cop ying evidence of the whole process interest of key people in England. of Australia becoming part of the British Empire. Little Some of the first offerings sent home were less wonder then, that drawings were so highly prized. systematic than later consignments, probably offered ‘A thousand thanks’, Lambert wrote to James more as a sign of safe arrival, a sign that thoughts Edward Smith in June 1801, ‘for your great kindness still turned to home. Or more to the point, sending to me’. Without wasting time on a salutation, and drawings and specimens back home from New South eager to set his friend’s mind at rest over the loan of Wales with the promise of more to come, is almost a volume of drawings, Lambert came straight to the an entreaty not to be forgotten and abandoned, point in his letter: an unspoken reminder that a little piece of Britain struggled in a colony at the far end of the world and I am only sorry you should send it with trepidation but I do not wonder at it. But I give hoped to secure a place in the British psyche. you my honor I will take as much care of it as can There was an even more immediate and be taken & would sleep with it under my Pillow personal dimension. Drawing improved skills and if I was not afraid of hurting it. I will return it safe the moment I have done with it, I have partly technique, or simply dispelled boredom, in the engaged a person to undertake to Copy them but same way that Elizabeth Macarthur talked about her he will do it under my own eye, therefore I shall botanical instruction under William Dawes and her take care he does not soil the Book, which I look on as the most valuable morsel of the kind I ever piano lessons with George Worgan as a means ‘to fill was entrusted with.’15 up a certain vacancy in my time’.13 The occupation and concentration required of drawing provided a Even by the polite standards of the day, Lambert’s welcome respite from the reality of their situation, a assurances to Smith are effusive and, as always,

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Port Jackson Painter, New Holland Crimson-billed Gull, Indigenous name ‘Tan-na-rang’, 1788–94, watercolour, 42.7 × 27.1 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 347

Latham’s copies are now bound in six volumes of drawings known as the Latham Collection, in the Natural History Museum London. Latham used them to describe most of the Australian species published in his second Supplement, which appears as volume 8, to the General Synopsis of Birds published in 1801. In January 1800 Latham wrote notifying Lambert that he was returning his ‘valuable books of drawings’ by the next day’s coach. As promised, Latham had given a name to each bird, written in pencil at the bottom of Lambert’s drawings. He complained of the difficulty of determining the genus of some birds because of the lack of ornithological knowledge of any of the artists noting: ‘I have been at much loss in respect to the Genus of many of them.’16 Whether Latham’s copies were made from Lambert’s own copied set of drawings, or from White’s New South Wales drawings, or from both, is not entirely clear but Latham certainly viewed White’s Watling Collection. Latham compiled a numbered listing of the bird drawings in the Watling Collection headed ‘This Catalogue was wrote by Dr. Latham, author of the “General Synopsis of Birds”’. Still preserved with the Watling Collection, Latham’s list includes 24 drawings that were missing when acquired by the Natural History Museum in 1902. The 1801 second Supplement was the first of Latham’s many published volumes to include Australian birds. Latham noted Lambert’s Australian drawings many times in his text: ‘in Mr. Lambert’s collection of drawings I observed’, ‘From Mr. Lambert’s drawings’, and ‘in those [drawings] of Mr. Lambert’,

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accompanied by his emphatic and reassuring under linings. It is clear that even between the closest of friends, it was not as easy as you might think to lend, or indeed to borrow drawings. The gesture was always accompanied by expansive assurances of care, diligence and fastidiousness. But Lambert understood the preciousness of drawings. There was no doubt he would take care of them. It was not unusual for collectors such as Lambert to hire artists to copy drawings for them. Banks hired five artists to complete Sydney Parkinson’s drawings in England after the young artist fell ill in Batavia and died on the homeward leg of the voyage of the Endeavour in 1770. In fact, copying was such a staple of art practice that the monotony of it often led to frustration. So for Lambert to commission copies of John White’s drawings to secure his own record of White’s extraordinary collection, because this was the only way he had to duplicate their information, was not unusual. Indeed because drawings could not be copied mechanically, and engravings were so expensive they only made sense for publication, the only way to obtain a copy was to have another artist create it. White’s set of drawings was sufficiently interesting and valuable to Lambert to justify the effort and expense of copies. Lambert considered the drawings important enough to lend them to England’s foremost ornithologist John Latham for him to classify, and Latham used his own suite of copyists, including his daughter Ann, to make a further set of copies.

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Artist unknown, Possibly Blue Groper (Achoerodus gouldii), 1788–1800, watercolour, 36 × 50 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4 f. 26

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Artist unknown, Unidentified, c. 1788–1800, watercolour, 19.6 × 32.2 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4 f. 17

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Thomas Watling, Stick insect annotated ‘Native name Murrungal’, 1792–94, watercolour, 13 × 20.5 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 414

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etc. But Latham had clearly also had access to White’s Watling Collection for his descriptions and notes, and the inclusion of the ‘native name’ often quote exactly White’s field notes from his collection and include the Indigenous names recorded on White’s drawings. The idea of copying drawings might seem problematic to us today because it implies forgery. It suggests at worst something dishonest and fraudulent and at best something lesser. But in the 18th century drawings were valued partly as records.17 Unlike forgeries that were usually created with the specific aim of making a perfect and exact copy with the intention to deceive, copies in the 18th century sense were created simply to circulate knowledge and information. In the same way that writing several versions of a diary, letter or report for circulation or to ensure safe delivery in the days of long, uncertain sea voyages was not unusual, making copies, tracings or engravings of drawings and paintings was also common practice as

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Port Jackson painter, A banksia called ‘the Honey tree of New South Wales’ (Banksia serrata or possibly aemula), 1788–94, watercolour, 37.8 × 25.4 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 416

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Artist unknown, Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus), 1790s, watercolour, 36.7 × 50.1 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 92

Grenville in June 1789. His first letter to Sir Joseph Banks was sent twice on two different ships. Both copies were annotated by Banks as received on 13 May 1789.18 Several versions exist of journals and accounts written by members of the First Fleet. There are three versions of Surgeon Arthur Bowes Smyth’s journal, the pages of the original covered in idle doodles as he composed his thoughts. A second version, written up by Bowes Smyth from the original includes his pen and ink drawings originally affixed to the journal

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the only means of circulating drawings among friends, patrons and associates. Phillip routinely wrote two, sometimes three versions of official documents to England from New South Wales, sent in different ships, sometimes copied in his own hand, or sometimes in the hand of a clerk. His first dispatch from Sydney Cove was sent on the transport Alexander, a duplicate was sent on the Friendship, and a triplicate on the Borrowdale when the ships left the colony in July 1788. All were acknowledged as received, by the Right Honourable William Wyndham

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pages with red sealing wax. The drawings have not been copied for the third version. Two versions exist of Philip Gidley King’s journal, a private copy and an official version that was published in part in 1793 with the journals of John Hunter and Arthur Phillip. There are two versions of seaman Jacob Nagle’s memoir, one held in the Mitchell Library and the other in the William L. Clements Library in Michigan. American-born Nagle wrote his memoir some 40 years after the events recorded and each version varies slightly in detail and emphasis.19 So much is known about the French expedition of La Pérouse, despite its disappearance in 1788, because he entrusted Governor Phillip with copies of the expedition’s final letters and dispatches, charts and journals for safe keeping, to be forwarded home to Paris. The idea of copying documents then was not unusual, in fact it made sense. Few artists created natural history drawings as a means of engaging with an idea or contemplating nature. Drawings were regarded as working documents. The work of natural history artists was less about the artists’ point of view and more about the need of patrons for an accurate documentary record. While skilled draughtsmen and women were highly sought after, in reality, artists working as copyists in England, usually on commission, could be as anonymous as convict artists working in the colonies and so finding clues to the identities of the artists commissioned by Lambert to copy his drawings is often impossible. Drawings

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Artist unknown, Eastern Curlew (Numenius madagascariensis), 1788–1800, watercolour, 50 × 37 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 78

to Tasmania, it is likely that at least some of these drawings were also copies.21 Lambert’s references to drawings or copies made by Ennis, Jaune and Hunt are fleeting. In 1798 Ennis was named as the copyist of a drawing by Ferdinand Bauer owned by Lambert, of an Australian genus, the Lambertia formosa, a shrub commonly known as the mountain devil. Described and named by Smith for Lambert the same year, it later appeared as an engraving in The Botanical Register in 1821 described as a ‘masterly drawing … liberally communicated … by Mr. Lambert for whom it was done by Mr. Ferdinand Bauer’.22 The same edition of The Botanical Register includes a drawing of a ‘splendid shrub’, Astelma eximium, introduced to England from the Cape of Good Hope by William Paterson and received in 1793. Also ‘from the pencil of Mr. Ferdinand Bauer’, it was communicated for use in the Register ‘by its possessor, Mr. Lambert’.23 In 1829 Lambert informed physician, botanist and editor of the Annals of Botany, John Sims, that an artist named Jaune was making a drawing of Sambuca plants from the herbarium of Sir Joseph Banks. Lambert had earlier supplied the plant, in flower, to Banks.24 The only reference to Hunt comes much later still, in 1840, towards the end of Lambert’s life. Writing to his friend, botanist William Hooker, Lambert was in a state of delighted anticipation awaiting the arrival of specimens from the Swan River in Western Australia. He noted, too, that Sims had new Lambertia that had been described. He would, he wrote,

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brought acclaim for those who accumulated them but little or none for those who actually drew them. This was as true for England as it was for New South Wales. An unnamed artist was commissioned by Lambert in 1802 to make copies of drawings lent to him that year by James Edward Smith. Only 19 years old and newly arrived in London from Bath he was, enthused Lambert, ‘a most excellent draughtsman in Natural History, I think much better than Andrews or Edwards’.20 But this talented young man received no other accolades in Lambert’s letters and has passed into history unknown. A careful reading of Lambert’s letters does yield some clues to the identities of some of his artists though. As well as the talented but anonymous 19 year old, and Andrews and Edwards, he mentions four other artists by name: Ennis, Hunt, Jaune and Littlejohn. It seems certain, that Austrian natural history artists and brothers Ferdinand and Franz Bauer continued to draw and possibly make copies for Lambert long after their collaboration on Genus pinus. During the 1820s, convict artist and forger, Joseph Lycett, recently returned from New South Wales, also completed at least one drawing for Lambert, a plate in the second edition of his Genus pinus titled ‘Ilex paraguensis’. A set of 13 watercolour views of Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales by Lycett, dating from around 1822–23, was included as Lot 442 in the 1842 sale of Lambert’s collection, their first recorded sale. As there is no evidence Lycett ever travelled

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Joseph Lycett, View of the Heads, and part of Botany Bay - from the End of Cook’s River about 8 miles from Sydney – New South Wales – The point of land seen to the right is call’d Cape Banks, that to the left Cape Solander, c. 1822–23, watercolour, 44.2 × 55.1 cm Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, DGD 1

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Joseph Lycett, The Lieutenant Governor’s Cottage, at New Norfolk – / 10 [or 18] miles from Hobart Town – Van Dieman’s Land, c. 1822–23, watercolour, 44.2 × 55.1 cm Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, DGD 1

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love to receive the loan of one ‘for Hunt to draw, I will return it as soon as he has taken the same’.25 Whether this was artist William Henry Hunt is uncertain. In 1823, Hunt had produced a wonderfully detailed watercolour drawing of the opulent Green Drawing Room of Lambert’s friend the Earl of Essex, at Cassiobury House, so Lambert and Hunt moved within the same circles. A renowned watercolourist but not known as a natural history artist, that Lambert’s copyist was William Henry Hunt can only be speculative. We are almost certainly on firmer ground identifying Andrews and Edwards. If they were the well known and talented Henry Charles Andrews and Sydenham Teast Edwards, then Lambert’s unnamed 19 year old artist from Bath, even allowing for Lambert’s enthusiasms, must indeed have been skillful for Andrews and Edwards were among the very best. Lambert first mentioned Andrews in September 1810 when the artist was sent to

Blandford’s gardens at White Knights, and to nearby Englefield Gardens owned by Richard Benyon, to draw ‘two of the most splendid plants in flower that was ever introduced to this Country’. At White Knights, Andrews’s subject was the Anneslea with leaves ‘8 feet round & full of spines’, and at Englefield, he drew a Convulvulus ‘bearing bunches of flowers each nearly as big as a half Crown piece & at least 2,000 out on the plant at a time’.26 Andrews was well connected in the botanical world and well known to Lambert. Married to the daughter of nurseryman, John Kennedy, of Lee and Kennedy’s Hammersmith nursery, Andrews’s range of skills included drawing, engraving, colouring and publishing. The descriptions in his 10 volume work, The Botanist’s Repository, Comprising Colour’d Engravings of New and Rare Plants (1797–1812) indicate he had access to all the major living collections of plants as well as the famous nursery of his father-in-law.

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After Ferdinand Bauer, Lambertia formosa, 1821, hand coloured engraving, 20 × 12.2 cm (plate) From Sydenham Edwards, The Botanical Register, vol. 7, Pl. 528. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, RB/S580.9/10

fond of science, or lovers of correct and highly finished drawings of plants or animals’. His Botanical Register cites information, drawings, and specimens liberally supplied by Lambert from whom ‘we are always incurring some debt of kindness’. It is more than possible that Lambert was one of Edwards’s employers.29 In 1804 Lambert received a long letter ‘from that curious little man … by the name of littleJohn from Van Diemen Land’. Littlejohn had sent a cargo of plants and specimens for Lambert by the returning ship the Ocean. In England five years earlier, in 1799, a man Lambert called Lyttlejohn had made ‘as good a drawing as I could wish’ of a very fine branch of the sago palm (Cycas revolute) given to Lambert from the Bishop of Winchester’s garden at Farnham Castle.30 Lambert’s reference to ‘littleJohn’ in Van Diemen’s Land in 1804, and ‘Lyttlejohn’ who drew for him in 1799, is likely to be Robert Littlejohn, a Scottish gardener who had sailed as a settler on the transport, Ocean, first to Port Phillip in 1803 and then to the Derwent River in Van Diemen’s Land where David Collins formed a settlement in 1804. An industrious man and a successful gardener, Littlejohn had received a land grant from Governor Philip Gidley King in 1805 at Prince of Wales Bay, Hobart Town in Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania. The plant Veronica derwentia littlejohn, found on the banks of the Derwent River and sent to Lambert ‘by one of the settlers’, probably Littlejohn, was named for him. It was drawn and described in Andrews’ Botanist’s Repository from a plant ‘communicated to us by A. B. Lambert’.31

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Andrews’ Botanist’s Repository includes many Australian plants. He seems to have had his own contacts in New South Wales for there are frequent references to ‘Botany Bay plants’ grown from seeds sent by William Paterson.27 Andrews was perhaps best known for his engravings of heaths featured in a four volume publication which prided itself on the exquisitely detailed, hand coloured engravings drawn ‘from Living Plants only … the whole executed by Henry Andrews’. Andrews had access to heaths in the collection of the Marquis of Blandford and in 1797 made a drawing of a branch of a Swamp paperbark (Melaleuca ericifolia) ‘obligingly supplied from the elegant conservatory of the Right Hon. The Marquis of Blandford at White Knights’.28 Sydenham Teast Edwards, a Member of the Linnean Society, also moved in Lambert’s circle and is a likely candidate for the artist mentioned by him named Edwards. Described as the ‘artist of most use to Mr. Curtis’, Edwards had so impressed William Curtis, founder of the Botanical Magazine in 1788, that he sponsored Edwards’s training in botany and botanical illustration and employed him as an illustrator. Edwards continued to work for the Botanical Magazine after Curtis’s death in 1799, and in 1815 he founded the Botanical Register, later known as Edwards’s Botanical Register. Known as a talented artist, Edwards’s work was highly sought after and he was ‘employed by many persons of distinction who were either

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Artist unknown, Veronica derwentia. New Holland Veronica, 1811, hand coloured engraving, 25.4 × 19.2 cm (sheet) From Andrews, The Botanist’s Repository, vol. 8, Pl. 531, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Q581-7/A

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Robert Littlejohn is known to have sent plants and seeds to Lambert, and these are now held in the Herbarium at Kew Gardens. He sent others to Robert Brown, now held in the Natural History Museum London. When he died in Hobart, Littlejohn was described as a ‘man of wealth of learning and a naturalist of repute’ who devoted a considerable portion of his time to botanical research ‘of which he was passionately fond’. He collected several rare Tasmanian plants which he classed with great industry: ‘His worth and abilities will long be remembered in this settlement.’32 Drawings created their own version of reality, their own impression of Australia. Their importance meant that being competent in drawing came to be considered a critical part of natural history practice. For all their beguiling, often distorted representations of the natural world, drawings mattered.

After Ferdinand Bauer, Astelma eximium, 1821, hand coloured engraving, 20 × 12.2 cm (plate) From Sydenham Edwards, The Botanical Register, vol. 7, plate 532. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, RB/S580.9/10

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chap ter 6

n at u r a l curiosities Birds first. Fish last. Instructions to the binder, volume 4

Artist unknown, Hawksbury duck, Australasian shoveler (Anas rhyncotis), 1790s?, watercolour, 37.1 × 50.1 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 87

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The acquisition by the Mitchell Library of Lambert’s Australian drawings included not only the three volumes known as the ‘Lambert Drawings’, but a further three volumes that were previously unrecorded. One of them, Volume 4, titled ‘Zoology of New Holland Etc’, is this book of fish and birds. Its contents are a surprise and a treat. The drawings of birds in Volume 4 almost take your breath away. With dramatic and expressive qualities not usually expected from natural history drawings, the lively melding of colours creates an arresting effect. There are small bursts of foliage. The scenes gleam in bright blues, greens and coppery tones. But it is the figures of the birds that are the most compelling for they do not merely obscure and distort

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Artist unknown, Hawksbury duck Australasian shoveler (Anas rhyncotis), 1790s?, watercolour, 50 × 37.1 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 89

scale and proportion so much as completely ignore it, creating a Lilliputian effect of giant birds in miniature landscapes. While many natural history drawings include distortions of scale and proportion, and many birds are depicted perching on branches that could not possibly support their weight, nowhere is the effect quite as dramatic and disorienting as here. There are indications, apart from the distorted scale, that the backgrounds and the subjects were possibly drawn by different artists. This can be seen in one, of the Hawksbury Duck, which shows the duck’s webbed feet resting on the surface of the water rather than submerged as would be expected. Yet the fine feather tips of others appear laid over the top of the background colour.

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Artist unknown, White-breasted Sea eagle, (Haliaeetus leucogaster), watercolour, 50 × 36.8 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 34

Artist unknown, White breasted Sea eagle, c. 1797, watercolour, 26.7 × 42.3 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 1, f. 40

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Artist unknown, White-breasted sea eagle, 1788–93, watercolour, 24.3 × 19.8 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 102

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The fish are depicted in large, vivid drawfishing compared to Aboriginal line and spear fishing ings that have captured the rich mingling of colours caused great astonishment and some anxiety to the quickly, before they have had time to dull and fade. At Aboriginal people who, naturally enough, thought they least four of them are previously unrecorded copies of were entitled to take what they needed from the British drawings from White’s Watling Collection, unrecorded hauls. British catches were generally shared but inevitably presumably because it was the ornithologists who had mutual tension flared over seasonal variability in fish pored over Lambert’s and White’s drawings, stocks, exacerbated by the size of the catch obscuring other subjects such as the fish. from net fishing.1 Fish Seaman Jacob Nagle, one of the sailors Fish was a staple for the Aboriginal who rowed Governor Phillip and his party north from people and the colonists alike. Port Jackson was well Botany Bay to Port Jackson searching for a better site for stocked in the summer of the arrival of the First Fleet. the colony, threw a fishing line into the water while The large catches that resulted from British seine net

Artist unknown, Barracouta, c. 1797, watercolour, 36.7 × 55 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4 f. 32

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Port Jackson Painter, Barracouta (Leionura atu), 1788–93, watercolour, 16.6 × 36.5 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 372

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Port Jackson Painter, Unidentified fish possibly stylised Old Wife, Indigenous name ‘Goe-in-mag-gee’, (Enoplosus armatus) 1788–93, watercolour, 22.7 × 29.4 cm From John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 378

Artist unknown, possibly Old Wife, c. 1797, watercolour, 36 × 49.2 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098 vol. 4, f. 23

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Port Jackson Painter, A New South Wales native sticking fish while his wife is employed fishing with hooks and lines in her canoe, 1788–94, watercolour, 20 × 30.5 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 29

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Artist unknown, Stylised drawing of a Sweep Scorpis?, c. 1797, watercolour, 36.8 × 49.2 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 24

Port Jackson Painter, Unidentified fish possibly Sweep Scorpis, Indigenous name ‘Mannadaang’, 1788–94, watercolour, 22.3 × 31.8 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 379

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idiosyncratic backgrounds of distorted scale, many with bodies of water or streams that snake through the landscape culminating in mini waterfalls cascading over rocks. Cascading water terraces had been a fashion in 18th century European parks and gardens but were also imitated in gardens in England. Components of English parks such as those created by Lancelot Capability Brown and others often included undulating ground and cascading water. Capability Brown, one of England’s most famous landscape gardeners, championed minimalist garden design that was looser and less formal, more natural. It would not be surprising if these backdrops were imitated, too, by natural history artists. But what if they had a different origin? While these backgrounds might seem particularly English, their park-like qualities accord with the frequent comments of the British, that the land around Sydney Cove and inland reminded them of parks: ‘To be sure’, wrote George Worgan, ‘in our Excursions Inland … we have met with a great Extent of Parklike Country, and the Trees of a moderate Size & at a moderate distance from each other, the Soil … clothed with extraordinarily luxuriant Grass’. For Hunter ‘the Woods here … resemble Deer Parks, as much as if they had been intended for such a purpose.’ These estate-like effects are now understood to have resulted from the systematic management of the land by Aboriginal people who regularly burned the growth and created grasslands and networks of tracks. Phillip describes the grass as being ‘as fine as in any Park in England’, and describes the Aborigines setting fire to the grass and burning the ground.4

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waiting for the officers surveying Sydney Cove. He ‘ketched a large Black Brim’ and Phillip commented that Nagle should ‘Recollect … that you are the first White Man that ever caught a fish in Sidney Cove’. As well as Nagle’s bream, the early letters, journals and reports refer to many varieties of fish: jewfish, snapper, whiting, cod, dory, leatherjacket, mackerel, mullet, large rays and innumerable others unknown in Europe, ‘many of which are extremely delicious’. In fact over 580 species of fish are now known for the Port Jackson region.2 There are frequent references to sharks ‘of monstrous size’. A shark caught in Sydney Cove and drawn by Lieutenant John Watts was hauled into a boat where it lay for a couple of hours, seemingly quiet until Watts’s dog walked past. The shark suddenly sprang upon it with ‘all the ferocity imaginable, and seized [the dog] by the leg’ until it could be freed by those on board.3 Four of the fish drawings in Volume 4 are variants of unsigned works in White’s Watling Collection by one of the Port Jackson Painters or are repeated in yet another collection, this time a collection of 69 drawings once owned by Sir Joseph Banks known alternately as Banks Ms 34, or the Port Jackson Painter Collection. How Banks acquired them is unknown though there is any number of possibilities. As always, the hand of more than one artist is evident. At least some of the drawings are likely to have been made in the colony, while others might have been made from specimens brought back to England. Some were copied and engraved for use in John White’s 1790 publication, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales. Around 18 of the birds in Volume 4 include

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Thomas Watling, A Groupe on the North Shore; of Port Jackson New South Wales, 1788–94, watercolour, 30.2 × 44.8 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 26

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Worgan reported on ‘a most delightful Excursion to Day with Captn Hunter and Lt Bradley, We went in a Boat about 12 Miles up the Harbour. For 3 or 4 Miles the Harbour forms a narrow arm, which at high Water, has the appearance of a River, the sides of this Arm are formed by gentle Slopes, which are green to the Water’s Edge. The Trees are small and grow almost in regular Rows, so that, together with the Evenness of the Land for a considerable Extent, it resembles a Beautiful Park.’ But most revealing of all is Worgan’s observation that could be a description of the backgrounds in these very drawings: ‘Here, a romantic rocky, craggy Precipice over which, a little purling stream makes a Cascade. There, a soft vivid-green, shady Lawn attracts your

Eye: Such are the prepossessing Appearances which the Country that forms Port Jackson presents successively to your View as You sail along it.’5 The common background, rather than the subject, of another sequence of drawings identifies the drawings as copies, or versions, of each other. Despite differences in the positioning of the bird’s head, the background of the drawing of the sooty tern, or New Holland tern, that appears in Lambert’s Volume 4, replicates the background of the same subject in a drawing signed by Watling. Each bird is shown in profile, facing to the right, standing on a riverbank with a waterfall flowing into a body of water in the foreground; a landscape of blue hills is in the distance.

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Artist unknown, Sooty Tern (Onychoprian fuscata), 1790s, watercolour, 48.7 × 36.3 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 85

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Artist unknown, New-Holland Tern, c. 1799, watercolour Latham Collection, Natural History Museum, London, vol. 6, f. 951

Artist unknown, Sterna novae Hollandiae, c. 1797, watercolour, 27 × 42 cm ‘Lambert Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 3, f. 37

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Thomas Watling, New Holland Tern, 1792–94, watercolour 24.4 × 19 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 342

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Surprisingly and uncharacteristically, Watling’s drawing shows the same distortion of scale and proportion, and the same miniature waterfall landscape. So which came first? Was the drawing owned by Lambert copied from Watling? Or has Watling copied the unidentified but talented artist in Volume 4? And could this suggest that the artist in Volume 4 was, in fact, a colonial artist? Watling’s drawing has been annotated in ink and pencil, and copied for John Latham. Although the depiction of Latham’s bird is quite different, the background is similar, though less detailed. There is no waterfall or river but the line of the mountains in the distant background has been copied from Watling or from Volume 4. If the artist of Volume 4 was the copyist, he must have copied Watling’s unusual background again and again and again. For the miniature waterfall occurs only twice in White’s collection, in drawings by Watling. The giant bird against a winding stream occurs only once. The waterfalls in Lambert’s Volume 4, however, occur four times and the Lilliputian backgrounds occur at least another dozen times. Watling did, indeed, include broody, picturesque backgrounds in his drawings, nowhere perhaps as obviously as in some of his landscapes featuring groups of Aboriginal people. He also included a longer annotation on his drawing of the sooty tern: ‘This almost half the natural size, and a pretty good re-semblance, with this exception, — only the bill not just so much bent.’ This comment could be read as a critique of his own

work; but would Watling critique the mistake rather than correct it? Is it instead, a critique of the drawing Watling had copied, replicating what he considered to have been a mistake by the other, unnamed artist? And yet Watling signed his drawing, despite its fault. Though perhaps not immediately for the brown ink used for his commentary on the drawing, iron gall ink, is different from the black ink, or possibly black watercolour paint, used for his signature.6 Could the explanation for the inclusion of waterfalls in Lambert’s Volume 4, simply be that this feature in two of Watling’s drawings so appealed to Lambert’s copyist that it was adopted and repeated? Or was Watling the copyist on this occasion? Is Watling’s drawing of the sooty tern and his critique in fact a copy of a drawing that he considered to be ‘pretty good’ but nonetheless faulty? And if Watling copied once, is he likely to have copied again? To add to the intrigue, Lambert’s Volume 4 [image p. 169] also includes a version of a rainbow lorikeet with a very detailed background. The same bird appears again among Watling’s drawings, signed with his initials, ‘TW’ [image p. 168 bottom], but Watling’s drawing has excluded all background detail. Then, to add another small piece to the puzzle, another copy of this drawing has surfaced. At first sight this small florid drawing [image p. 168 top] shows little affinity with any of the others apart perhaps, from the outstretched wings. It is not until the background detail is compared with the version in volume 4, that the fact of the copy emerges.

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One of a set of nine watercolour during the years 1794, 1795, 1796 and into 1797. It does tell us that any drawing on 1794 paper could drawings all in the same decorative yet naive style, these last-mentioned copies are the least accomplished obviously not have been created earlier than that year. of all the drawings, probably created by an amateur Allowing for travel time, the earliest use of 1794 paper artist whose knowledge of technique, not to mention in New South Wales could not have been before the ornithology, was basic and limited. end of 1795, probably after the T h e s c i en c e Some are on paper arrival of the Reliance in September, watermarked 1794. While the o f dat i n g a r t the most direct ship arriving from England that year. The Reliance also evidence of watermarks can only ever be indicative of the genealogy of drawings returned John Hunter to the colony to take up the rather than conclusive, they are part of a bigger, more post of Governor, succeeding Arthur Phillip. Hunter complex puzzle. understood the need for paper in New South Wales. Watermarks, the faint manufacturer’s design For drawings such as the naively drawn rainbow that can be seen in paper when held up to light, are lorikeet to have been created in New South Wales, it unique to each mill. Made from wire, watermarks are could not have been drawn before the end of 1795, incorporated, either with wire or by soldering, into but probably later; and any drawings created in New the framed moulding that holds the paper pulp used South Wales before about September 1795 can only to make an individual sheet of paper, leaving a design have been drawn on undated paper. Undated paper, mark in the finished paper. Even within a paper mill, of course, could have been bought, stockpiled and each watermark from each moulding is always unique. used for many years — artist J.M.W. Turner used his Papers did not contain dated watermarks until stock of ‘1794 J.Whatman’ paper for nearly 40 years 1794 when it became a statutory requirement to — so a watermark is indicative of dates rather than include the year of manufacture. The idea was that the authoritative, they give a not-before date, but not an year would be updated annually. In reality though, end date, for the creation of drawings. creating and changing watermarks was fiddly and in The ‘Lambert Drawings’ in Volumes 1–3, any case, they could be re-used for several years to drawn in London, are mostly on paper watermarked good effect and so most dates continued to be used 1794. This makes sense for we know Lambert had 7 until they wore out. Only then was the year updated. them copied sometime after he received them from The earliest dated papers, then, appeared John White in March 1797 the year when most from 1794. Some 1795 papers exist but the next paper manufacturers seem to have upgraded their most common year is 1797. This means that paper watermarks; allowing a little time for manufacture, watermarked 1794 could have been manufactured transport to wholesalers, then retailers and finally

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Artist unknown, Rainbow lorikeet, undated, watercolour, 16.5 x 16.6 cm National Library of Australia, Canberra, nla.pic-an5487505

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Thomas Watling, Red-breasted or Blue-bellied Parrot, Indigenous name ‘Goeril’, 1792–94, watercolour, 19.7 × 20.4 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 125

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Artist unknown, Rainbow lorikeet, 1790s, watercolour, 34.5 × 47.8 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 40

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Artist unknown, Purple Swamphen or Purple Gallinule (Porphyrio porphyrio), 1790s, watercolour, 48.7 × 36.5 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 84

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drawings from Lambert’s volume 4 and by Doody were also found among drawings by the Sydney Bird Painter. This is possibly the strongest indication we have that groups of artists were sharing supplies, and more than that, that the artists of Lambert’s volume 4 and the Sydney Bird Painter were working in the colony where they were producing these drawings.8

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to customers, 1797 paper might not have been distributed and used even in England much before late 1797 or 1798. The drawings in Lambert’s Volume 4 however, are all on undated paper, consistent with all the earliest drawings known to have been produced in New South Wales. But of greater interest is the knowledge that 18 watermarks in Volume 4 are from the exact same paper mould as drawings by William Paterson’s convict artist, John Doody. Individually handmade, each watermark has slight variations in dimensions, scale and form from one paper mould to the next. A single paper mould, however, carries its own unique mark and produces identical watermarks with little variation. Paterson’s detailed documentation of Doody’s drawings in letters to Sir Joseph Banks clearly indicate that his drawings were created on Norfolk Island no later than 1794. Paper supplies were limited in New South Wales and were replenished only as ships arrived. There is therefore, a strong possibility that the two sets of drawings, Lambert’s Volume 4 and Doody’s, could have been created if not simultaneously, then within a limited timeframe using the same stock of paper. If one set, Doody’s, was created in the colony, then the other, Volume 4, on the same paper stock was likely also to have been created in the colony. Unlike Turner, the colony did not have the luxury of stockpiling paper for extended periods, though it might well have been rationed. Extending this a little further, a number of shared watermarks, from the same paper moulds, in

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a pardon. The only concession made to him was the There is no direct evidence that Watling, recommendation that he be brought to the attention who considered himself a true artist, would have of the Governor and others of authority in New copied the drawings of others in New South Wales South Wales.9 whom he probably felt were inferior to him in At his trial, one of the documents submitted any case. But does the evidence of watermarks in in his defence had been a sample sheet announcing Volume 4, suggesting that these drawings might classes teaching ‘Ladies and have been created in New South Wat li n g , Gentlemen’ drawing at Watling’s Wales, combined with the knowledge Academy. He clearly possessed that Watling did indeed copy, if not the artist a degree of skill that few in the drawings then at least beautiful colony would have rivalled, as well as confidence descriptive word pictures, change the way we read and pride in that skill. his drawings? Could there be hints that Watling Watling is the only convict who has left an might indeed have copied from others? extended, unequivocal account of his feelings about Thomas Watling was that rare, brazenly confident his life and relationships in the colony. Probably convict who made higher claims both for himself and published in 1794, the main source of information for his work. about him is a small booklet of his letters written to Probably born in 1762, in Dumfries, the aunt who had raised him. Little reading between Scotland, Watling was transported to New South the lines is necessary to understand his injured feelings Wales following his conviction in 1788 for forgery. of self-pride, his keen sense of justice and sharp Nurturing deeply held grievances about his treatment feeling of having been wronged. and his fate, Watling’s training and skill as an artist Watling reached New South Wales in October were critical in the outcome for him. As a convicted 1792 via an unusually drawn-out route. At the Cape forger he could have expected a death sentence but of Good Hope in 1791 he escaped: ‘I enjoy freedom!’. instead his artistic skill probably saved him from that fate. A month later he was recaptured and imprisoned for But it also worked against him. Awaiting seven months until, sent on board the Royal Admiral, he transportation, Watling was one of two prisoners finally continued on to New South Wales.10 So often thwarted, Watling knew how to who played a part in foiling a mutiny on their ship nurture a grudge and his letters make joyless reading. the Peggy while moored at Spithead. While the other They tell a story of his discontents and unhappiness. prisoner was pardoned for his role, Watling, ‘an Bitterness and complaint and a sense of being ill-used ingenious Artist’, was considered an ‘acquisition to are recurring themes. He continually railed against his the new Colony at Botany Bay’ and so did not receive

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1

2

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2 Thomas Watling, Unidentified fish, Indigenous name ‘Karra gnorra’, 1792–94, watercolour, 15.5 × 28.7 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 375

3 Possibly Thomas Watling, Unidentified fish, 1788-1794?, watercolour, 20.2 × 31.8 cm Port Jackson Painter Collection, Banks Ms 34, Natural History Museum, London, Port Jackson Drawing, no. 64

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1 Unknown artist, Wrasse? (possibly Pseudolabrus), c. 1797, watercolour, 29.2 × 41.2 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 4, f. 22

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Thomas Watling, White-crowned Honeyeater (Phylidonyris pyrrhopterus), Indigenous name ‘Balganera’, 1792–94, watercolour, 19.1 × 15.9 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 206

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situation and his reduced circumstances. His letters were alternately heart rending, incredibly loving, or vehemently bitter. The love was directed towards his aunt, Marion Kirkpatrick, who raised the orphan Watling as her own child. She is Watling’s ‘poor, dear, dear aunt’, ‘dear, dear parent’ who has apparently ensured her nephew received a good education. He comes across as well read and erudite in his letters. Referring to John Milton’s poetic melancholy he apologises to this ‘best of parents that this il-pensorosa gloom urges me to affect you’.11 The bitterness was directed towards anyone in authority but especially John White. As a Surgeon, White was capable and competent, though disgruntled. As a person, if half of Watling’s portrayal of him is true, he was arrogant and overbearing, self-important and imperious. White, in turn, found Watling conceited, pompous, and disdainful of authority. A character of cocky self-assurance, especially combined with his lowly and precarious status as a convict, Watling was an obvious target for the severe discipline that could be meted out in the colony, ‘burthened by cruelty, hunger, and the most laborious of employment’.12 He would have been well advised to cultivate White’s good opinion of him rather than opposing him at every turn. Watling was almost certainly neither entirely happy with the work he produced in New South Wales nor, perhaps, entirely bothered to produce his best. His work was ‘such as may be expected from genius in bondage, to a very mercenary sordid

person’. Or perhaps he was compensating for the degree of difficulty he faced, finding the contents of this ‘luxuriant museum’ strange and baffling. Watling reacted to New South Wales, to ‘the flattering appearance of nature’ with an artist’s eye, but insisted it would be a mistake to conclude that ‘these romantic scenes will much amuse my pencil’.13 He presents the constraints on his imagination, the virtual enslavement to White, as almost the worst of his imprisonment. Watling considered himself a true artist whose work was not merely documentary in service to natural history. He wanted to achieve something more creative, ‘to select and combine’, to exercise his own artistic and aesthetic judgement in other words. He might then have overcome the limitations presented by the apparent sameness of the country, and indeed have found ‘engaging employment’. Had he been free to use his imagination, ‘perhaps nothing could surpass the circumambient windings, and romantic banks of a narrow arm of the sea, that leads from this [ie, from Sydney Cove] to Parramatta … The poet may there decry numberless beauties; nor can there be fitter haunts for his imagination.’14 He is, on the one hand, in awe of the ‘elysian scenery of a Telemachus; the secret recesses for a Thomson’s musidora; arcadian shades, or classic bowers’ seen at every turn by ‘the ravished eye’; shade overhead, cooling, perfumed breezes, avenues of mangroves and ‘picturesque rocks, entwined with non-descript [i.e., not previously described] flowers’.

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Thomas Watling, Bittern (Botaurus poiciloptilus), 1792–94, watercolour, 24.8 × 18.1 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 306

In short, he concludes, all things being equal, ‘this country need hardly give place to any other on earth’.15 And yet, the landscape painter seeks in vain ‘for that beauty which arises from happy-opposed off-scapes’, backgrounds for landscapes, usually furnished by ‘bold rising hills, of azure distances’. The principle traits of the country around Sydney Cove were ‘extensive woods, spread over a little-varied plain’. It all suggests that Watling struggled to find the picturesque in New South Wales yet there are drawings of his that include picturesque elements.

the most accurate and elegant that have, as yet, been received in Britain, from the new world’.16 The book did not eventuate and we can only speculate on the fascinating convict perspective that might have resulted if his publication had indeed proceeded. It was an ambitious plan and one is left with a feeling of admiration for Watling, and indeed for his aunt, that this ‘young man of unripe Years’, orphaned at an early age when his ‘parents died poor’, raised by his aunt, herself in ‘low circumstances’, who has somehow managed to ensure, judging by

There is a sting in the tail of Watling’s story. He is not quite the person he has presented Watling’s letters, that her young charge received a good education.17 But there is a sting in the tail of Watling’s story. He is not quite the person he has presented himself to be. His language is sophisticated, his letters well written and erudite, peppered with literary references. His descriptions are some of the boldest, most striking early images of New South Wales. He writes of a country where, it seems to him, ‘the whole appearance of nature must be striking in the extreme to the adventurer, and at first this will seem to him to be a country of enchantments’.18 His description of the noise and clamour of New South Wales is vivid and alive:

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One wonders whether Watling, more than most, had his eye on posterity. He had his own plans to publish a book about New South Wales using his ‘highly-finished Set of Drawings, done faithfully upon the Spots, from Nature’, a possible reference to a second set of drawings secreted from White? Describing himself as the ‘Principal Limner in New South Wales’ Watling’s intended subjects included: ‘Partial and general views of Sydney, Parramatta, and Toongabbie; romantic groves, or native groups, and … if possible … curiosities in ornothology [sic] … And botany shall be interwoven.’ Ever confident, Watling rated ‘his abilities equal to the task proposed, and flatter[ed] himself, that his performances shall be

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Thomas Watling, Ciliary Warbler Male or Grey-backed silvereye (Zosterops lateralis), 1792–94, watercolour, 18.4 × 15.8 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 284

The vast number of green frogs, reptiles, and large insects, among the grass and on the trees, during the spring, summer and fall, make an incessant noise and clamour. They cannot fail to surprise the stranger exceedingly, as he will hear their discordant croaking just by, and sometimes all around him, though he is unable to discover whence it proceeds: — nor can he perceive the animals from whence the sounds in the trees issue, they being most effectually hid among the leaves and branches.19

Yet Watling’s beautifully descriptive passages, seemingly so evocative of the area around Sydney Cove, are a pretence for they are not entirely Watling’s words. In 1784, a British soldier, John F.D. Smyth, who had settled for a time in America before returning to England, published a book describing his experiences and impressions, A Tour of the United States of America.20 Watling had clearly read it for he has used passages of Smyth’s text describing America, and transposed them to New South Wales, skirting around those parts which cannot be manipulated to describe Sydney and its surrounds. Of the noise and clamour described by Watling, Smyth wrote:

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The prodigious multitude of green frogs, reptiles, and large insects, on the trees, as well as the bullfrogs in the swamps, ponds, and places of water, during the spring, summer, and fall, make an incessant noise and clamour.

A further section, specifically describing bullfrogs, follows in Smyth’s text but has been omitted by Watling as not relevant to New South Wales. Smyth

then continued: ‘They surprise a man exceedingly, as he will hear their hoarse, loud, bellowing clamor just by him, and sometimes all around him, yet he cannot discover from whence it proceeds; they being all covered in water, and just raising their mouth only a little above the surface when they roar out, then instantly draw it under again. They are of the size of a man’s foot. Nor can you perceive the animals from whence the sounds in the trees proceed, they being most effectually hid among the leaves and branches.’ This was followed by Smyth’s description of African slaves specific to America and again omitted by Watling.21 Watling then continued: The air, the sky, the land, are objects entirely different from all that a Briton has been accustomed to see before. The sky clear and warm; in the summer very seldom overcast, or any haze discernable in the azure; the rains, when we have them, falling in torrents, & the clouds immediately dispersing. Thunder … in loud contending peals, happening often daily, & always within every two or three days, at this season of the year. Eruscations and flashes of lightning, constantly succeeding each other in quick and rapid succession. The land, an immense forest, extended over a plain country, the maritime parts of which, are interspersed with rocks, yet covered with venerable majestic trees, hoary with age, or torn with tempests. In a word, the easy, liberal mind, will be filled with astonishment, and find much entertainment from the various objects that every where present themselves.22

His words echo Smyth’s text quite precisely with small adaptations to suit his purposes in New South Wales. Watling has repeated Smyth’s description

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of the air, the sky and the land, but again has ignored Smyth’s statement regarding ‘the inhabitants, being two-thirds blacks’. Where Smyth has written of the ‘clear and serene’ sky, Watling’s sky was ‘clear and warm’. Watling’s observation that there is ‘very seldom … any haze discernible in the azure’, echoes Smyth’s ‘very seldom … any haze to be observed in the atmosphere’. Watling’s description of the torrential rains, the clouds, the frequent dreadful thunder, etc, repeats Smyth word for word, even appropriating Smyth’s evocative ‘eruscations and flashes of lightning, constantly succeeding each other, in quick and rapid transitions’. And so it continues, over several pages of Smyth’s text. Watling has described what he found in New South Wales by lifting or tweaking text directly from Smyth’s published account of his observations of America. It is possible that Watling owned a copy of Smyth’s book, but more likely that he had had access to someone else’s copy in the colony, possibly John White’s.23 Watling’s inclusion of another wonderful description of ‘Trees wreathing their old fantastic roots on high’, reads almost identically to a line from an Elegy Written in a Church Courtyard, a poem by Thomas Gray published in 1751. In it Gray describes the poet’s grave with the words: ‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech / That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high …’ It seems unlikely that Watling could really have hoped to pass this poetic line off as his own words.24

This was an age that invariably copied and borrowed, when copying had a far less judgmental resonance than it does today. And in a sense, the selective inclusion of Smyth’s text and the line from Gray’s poem, in a personal letter is far more revealing of Watling than if he had truly composed the words himself. Knowing his letters were likely to be circulated more widely by his aunt, at least to each of the friends he has named in them, his copying of Smyth suggests a deep need to be perceived as an intelligent, observant and educated man. Smyth’s words also perhaps served to heighten the impression of Watling as the hapless victim of a miscarriage of justice, his erudite and evocative language serving, in his mind at least, as an indication if not necessarily of his innocence, then at the very least of his worth to society and the loss to Britain of forcing him to languish in a remote convict colony. It is an audacious thought but it fits Watling’s aggrieved, sanctimonious representation of himself. Nonetheless, his use of Smyth’s words does not make Watling a liar. He has been dishonest with his reader, perhaps, but he has almost certainly not lied about the impression New South Wales made on him. Smyth’s descriptions and observations are likely to be a true reflection of Watling’s reactions which he simply lacked the words to express. And it does raise the question of how much Watling might have copied from others, and whether he also copied drawings, such as those in Lambert’s Volume 4? Just as a whole category of competent

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to all the Drawings, but should you publish them I think the Name may be left out’. If White’s attempts to stop Watling from signing his works seem particularly flagrant by today’s standards, it was a common situation between convict artists and their patron overseers who not only owned their convicts’ time and labour, they also owned the work they produced, literally and intellectually. Few convict or indeed naval artists were acknowledged by name and only a very few signed their work forfeiting that mark of authorship of their own work which we not only expect but take so for granted. Watling’s assertion of his rights as the artist, and White’s attempts to suppress him, are enormously revealing of class and social relations in New South Wales and their surprising tendency, like nature itself, to be almost inverted in the colony. White’s anger could have meant a far more difficult, less certain future for Watling. But the difficult, testy relationship between master and convict clearly had advantages for White that he was unwilling to relinquish. White needed Watling and his drawings as much as Watling needed White’s patronage and protection. White’s publication ambitions handed Watling the trump card. As a result, Watling is one of the very few early colonial artists who can be identified today and to whom a significant body of work can be attributed with certainty. So in the end, Watling won and the entire collection was named for him rather than for his master, the ‘haughty despot’, John White, who assembled it.

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artists in England were copyists, the situation seems to have been similar in New South Wales: artists copied each other or made copies of their own work in informal schools of drawing. They copied as insurance against loss and they copied for simple self-improvement. Arthur Phillip for instance, who often presented drawings to officials at places where his ships called, always required his clerk, Midshipman Henry Brewer, to create two sets of his drawings, one set to be given away, and the second set to be retained by Phillip. 25 The relationship between Watling and White did not bring out the best in either man. Watling’s most obvious, bold and provocative defiance of White’s authority was the act of signing his drawings. As a convict, signing his work was the very epitome of the subordinate getting above his station. But his protest proved effective for Watling’s signature appears on all but four of his likely 140 drawings in White’s collection. White, though, had one final card to play in this game of attribution and ownership. He annotated many of Watling’s drawings, usually with descriptions of habitat and feeding habits; he would describe the call or whistle of a bird, sometimes the method of its capture. At least once, White annotated a drawing by Watling, of the ciliary warbler [image p 179], denouncing the artist and his practice of signing his work. This little bird, White’s note reads, ‘is the only one of the kind ever seen … The pride and vanity of the Draughtsman has induced Him to put his Name

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Artist unknown, Woody pear (Xylomelum pyriforme), c. 1797, watercolour, 36.6 × 23 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 6

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chap ter 7

t h e b o ta n i c a l albums Ungovernable enthusiasm A.H. Harworth to A.B. Lambert, 2 February 1804

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Australian plants required a great deal of patience and dedication. British nurseries often waited years for them to flower. A parcel of seeds sent by William Paterson from New South Wales in 1793 to Lee and Kennedy’s Hammersmith nursery did not flower until five years later, in 1798. Despite ‘all the beauty and variety’ in New South Wales — the waratahs, Gymea lilies, the varieties of orchid, the black swans, animals with pouches or duck bills — the love affair with Australian natural history was not blind. There were also laments ‘that the vegetable productions of New Holland, however novel and singular, are deficient in beauty’.1

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Artist unknown, Cumberland Tree (Clereodendrum possibly tomentosum), c. 1797, watercolour, 31 × 19 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 171

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best Artists in town, framed, & sent with my compts However, there were no such complaints to Lady Eliz. Luttrell’ stressing that the drawing is ‘to from Governor Phillip who had completely thrown be finished in the best means possible. Phillip would himself into the task of documenting all the many meet all the costs.4 trees and shrubs of the Sydney Cove area. He praised Lady Elizabeth was the elder sister of the many plants but there was one he particularly Duchess of Cumberland. Both favoured, the Cumberland tree. P h i lli p women were controversial. A Phillip was direct and almost commoner and a widow when uncharacteristically demanding in a and the she married Cumberland in 1771, letter written in December 1791 to a n d C u m b er l Anne Luttrell had never been Sir Joseph Banks. In it he enclosed a received in court and her marriage drawing of a tree from New South t r ee had precipitated the Royal Marriages Wales which he had named the Act 1772 prohibiting members of the Royal family Cumberland tree. He had also sent three living from marrying without the king’s permission. specimens to England, growing in tubs. The year before, Phillip had named the tree for In 1789 Lady Elizabeth had been a subscriber5 to The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay which George III’s sister-in-law, Anne Luttrell, the Duchess of Cumberland, wife of the King’s brother, Henry the included Phillip’s dispatches from the settlement at 2 Duke of Cumberland. New South Wales. Considered crass and dissolute, When he left England, among the many by 1797 she had been convicted and imprisoned necessary items Phillip packed to take with him to for gambling debts. While it can be presumed that New South Wales, he included a ‘very large handsome the naming of the Cumberland tree for the Duchess print of her royal highness the Dutchess [sic] of might have simply been flattery in the hope of Cumberland’. It was one of the items shown to receiving some favour, Phillip’s connection, especially to the Duchess’s sister Elizabeth Luttrell, Arabanoo, the first Aboriginal to be captured and is not known. taken into the colony at the end of December 1788. Amazingly, it seems that Phillip’s original There was general interest that he recognised the 3 detailed and accomplished watercolour of the portrait to be a woman. In sending his drawing of the Cumberland tree Cumberland tree has survived [image p. 186], to Banks, Phillip was very particular in emphasising interfiled with a number of other works of Norfolk that he wished ‘the tree to retain the name I have Island plants by William Paterson’s convict artist, given it’ and that he would ‘esteem it as a favour’ if John Doody. In addition to Doody’s 53 watercolour Banks would have the drawing copied ‘by one of the drawings, the album includes a detailed drawing of

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Artist unknown, Cumberland Tree, c. 1791, watercolour, 37.7 x 27.1 cm Doody Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, DL PXX 1, Series 2, f.1

the Cumberland tree and another three drawings of Australian orchids. None is native to Norfolk Island and none has been drawn by Doody. The Cumberland tree watercolour has been annotated in a beautiful clerical hand, possibly by one of the two people who served as clerks for Phillip, William Broughton or Henry Brewer. The same hand appears among other documents copied or compiled for Phillip including the third notebook of Sydney vocabularies belonging to Lieutenant of Marines, William Dawes. Titled ‘Vocabulary of the language of N.S.Wales, in the neighbourhood of Sydney. Native and English …’, the notebook has been written in the identical clerical hand that appears on Phillip’s Cumberland tree drawing.6 The Cumberland tree’s annotation reads: The Cumberland tree when not injured, grows tall and very streight, if cut down it forms a handsome bush. It flowers in October and November and the seeds are ripe in January and February. The [missing word] is of a very rich crimson colour before the seeds are ripe. The leaf, flowers and seeds are drawn their natural size.7

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Phillip’s artist seemed to have understood the conventions of scientific drawings, the placements and details required if not all the underlying science, and this despite Phillip’s early misgivings about the lack of botanical skill in the colony. There are three other versions of Phillip’s prized Cumberland tree including one that has been bound into Volume 5 of Lambert’s collection [image p. 184], containing his Australian botanical drawings. Lambert’s version is no doubt copied from White’s

Watling Collection [image p. 189], drawn by one of the Port Jackson Painters. Another version appears among the set of small botanical drawings in the Ducie Collection [image p. 188]. While each of the versions is a carefully crafted drawing that includes fine detail such as the dotted texture of the red seed pods, each also contains the small variations, small losses of detail that we have come to expect and accept from copies. Phillip’s original depicts the full habit of the tree and leaf detail and therefore includes more content than any of the other versions. The habit of the tree and the leaf detail have been omitted from all other versions. The Ducie version includes flower and stamen detail, the red and purple seeds and seed detail. Root detail has been added, a new element that appears only in the Ducie copy. The Port Jackson Painter in the Watling Collection, and Lambert’s copyist, on the other hand, have omitted some small details such as the stamens. All copies, except Ducie’s, have included an inscription and Phillip’s chosen name for the tree: ‘The Cumberland tree found near the sea shore is supposed to grow to Timber’.

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Artist unknown, Smooth spider bush or Lolly bush (Clerodendrum floribundum or tomentosum), c. 1791, watercolour, 23.6 × 18.8 cm Ducie Collection, National Library of Australia, Canberra, nla.pic-vn3579823

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Port Jackson Painter, Cumberland Tree, 1788–94, watercolour, 29.3 × 17.1 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 439

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Artist unknown, Yellow Gum tree, Native name Goo rung arra (Xanthorrhoea), c. 1797, watercolour, 31.5 × 18.5 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 45

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Port Jackson Painter, Yellow Gum Tree, Native name Goo rung arra, 1788–94, watercolour, 31.9 × 17.9 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 446

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Artist unknown, Red Wax flower (Crowea saligna), c. 1797, watercolour, 34 × 19.7 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 137

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running head first fleet

Port Jackson Painter, Red Wax flower (Crowea saligna), 1788–94, watercolour, 34 × 19.7 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 457

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Artist unknown, The Wild Orange (Pittosporum undulatum), 1790s, watercolour, 32 × 20.1 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 6, f. 37

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Lambert’s two volumes of botanical drawings 6 might also have been created in New South Wales from Australia are now referred to as Volumes 5 and 6. [images pp. 194, 196]. They were acquired by Derby from the 1842 Lambert Bound in chronological order by approximate sale as a single lot. They seem not to have been compared time of flowering, from January to December, the or annotated or indeed examined after Lambert’s death. volume seems intended as a calendar of flowering. Two There is no evidence that they ever left their shelf in the drawings of a woody pear (Xylomelum pyriforme), bound Derby library and their very existence at the beginning and the end of the seems to have been overlooked. volume, are variants of drawings by L a m b er t ’ s Little has, as yet, been uncovered Watling from White’s Collection. vo l u m e s about Volume 6 and its possible origins. The drawings contained in Titled ‘Drawings of Plants from New Volume 5, ‘Drawings of Plants of New 5 and 6 South Wales’ and bound into a small South Wales’, on the other hand, tell folio, the volume contains 113 botanical drawings, a number of different stories and have been bound including one that is merely an incomplete outline in together from various sources. The volume contains a iron gall ink. mixed bag of drawings, clearly created by artists and The majority have been annotated in one or two copyists of widely 18th century hands, and include field notes regarding diverging ability. the species, size, flowering period and conditions. Of the 257 drawings in the volume, 36 have been One has been inscribed ‘Hort: Lee. Hammersmith. copied from botanical drawings in White’s Watling 1798’, indicating that it had probably been drawn from Collection from originals by one of the Port Jackson a specimen growing in the Hammersmith nursery of Painters. Lambert’s copies are carefully drawn but Lee and Kennedy. This last is the only drawing on dated usually omit some detail, typically the full habit of paper, ‘J Whatman 1794’. The remaining drawings the tree or shrub. in Volume 6 are all on undated paper and have been More surprising is the inclusion of a number of drawn in a simple but uniform style. original drawings among the copies in Volume 5 that Volume 6 also includes drawings on paper have almost certainly originated in New South Wales stock that shares watermarks — from identical paper including one, of a Mahogany tree [image p. 198], that moulds — with Lambert’s Volume 4 and drawings in has been drawn by one of the Port Jackson Painters and the Sydney Bird Painter volume. And in three instances, annotated in John White’s hand. Another, possibly by the Volume 6 includes identical paper stock to known same artist, features ‘The Brown gum tree’ [image p. 199]. colonial drawings produced by John Doody. There is Another sheet contains two drawings, each signed then a strong suggestion that the drawings in Volume ‘T.W.’ and annotated in Watling’s hand [image p. 197].

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Artist unknown, Flannel flower (Actinotus helianthi), 1790s, watercolour, 23 × 18.4 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 6, f. 82

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Thomas Watling, Acacia, possibly hispidula; Narrow-leaf drumsticks (Isopogon anethifolius), 1787–94, watercolour, 18.4 x 31.4 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 237

a number ‘will be found in the long bottle full of flowers for Doct.r Smith’. Paterson is known to have used bottles to preserve succulent plants and in May 1793 had written to Banks asking him to send a small case of wide mouthed bottles so that plants that could not easily be dried, such as succulents, could be sent back complete for ‘tho’ I have taken great pains in drawing some of them I must doubt whether they are perfect enough to be described’. Paterson was well versed in the demands and intricacies of preserving specimens of all kinds even if he lacked the intellectual underpinning of science and, as he himself acknowledged, lacked competency in drawing. 8

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All would seem to have originally been part of White’s Watling Collection but have been separated from their source collection, whether intentionally or not, and retained instead by Lambert where they have remained ever since. A group of drawings in Volume 5, mostly of orchids and succulents, could also be original drawings from New South Wales. A brief annotation on four of them, in Lambert’s hand, reads ‘Coll: Paterson delin’, indicating that not only have they been received from William Paterson, they have also been drawn by Paterson, ‘delin’ being an abbreviation of the Latin delineavit meaning ‘he/she drew it’. Two are also inscribed with notes on the verso referring to the ‘tender texture’ of the succulents and noting that

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Port Jackson Painter, Swamp Mahogony, (Eucalyptus, possibly robusta), 1788–94, watercolour, 31.7 x 19.2 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 148 n at u r a l c u r i o s i t y

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running head first fleet

Port Jackson Painter, Brown Gum Tree, 1788–94, watercolour, 37.2 x 30.4 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 148

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Quite amateurish, Paterson’s drawings [images 1,3 p. 203] are distinguished by their awkward placement of the image on the page, even allowing for the fact that each of his drawings have been roughly trimmed. His drawings are not repeated in White’s Watling Collection but they have been copied elsewhere.

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Further affirmation of Paterson as the artist comes from an unsuspected set of drawings held in a university collection in Germany. Inscribed ‘Geschenk Seiner Majestät des Königs Ernst August. 1842. Franz Bauer’s colorirte Abbildungen von Pflanzen aus Neuholland’ they are a set of 22 coloured drawings of plants, mainly orchids, from New Holland by artist Franz, or Francis,

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1 Artist unknown, Flying duck orchid (Caleana major), 1791–92?, incomplete watercolour Ross Set, Linnean Society, London 2 Artist unknown, Flying duck orchid (Caleana major), 1790s, incomplete watercolour, 31.7 × 19 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 216 3 Franz Bauer, Flying duck orchid (Caleana major), c. 1793, incomplete watercolour, Franz Bauer Papers, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen, Bauer Portfolio F, f. 20

Possibly William Dawes, No. 1: Epacris longiflora; no. 2: Flying duck orchid (Caleana major), c. 1788–91, watercolour, 56.5 × 42 cm Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 17, f. 18

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Bauer. Contained in Portfolio F of Bauer’s papers, the drawings were presented to the University of Göttingen in 1842 by Prince Ernst August, son of George III and since 1837 King of Hanover. From the age of 15 Ernst August had lived and been educated in Göttingen so his connection to Germany and Göttingen in particular ran deep.9

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1 William Paterson, (Buchardia umbellata) orchid, 1790s, incomplete watercolour, 31.4 x 18.4 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 119

2 James Sowerby, Melaleuca ericifolia, or Swamp paperbark, 1803, hand coloured engraving From James Edward Smith, Exotic botany …, vol. 1, Pl. 34. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, MRB/Q581.9/S

3 William Paterson, Leopard orchid Diursis (probably maculata); Cyanicula caerulea, 1790s, incomplete watercolour, 30.6 x 17.5 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 217

4 Possibly William Dawes, Swamp Lily (Crinum pedunculatum), 1788–91, watercolour, 56.5 × 42 cm Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 17 no. 14

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Artist unknown, Possibly Bitter pea (Daviesia mimosoides), 1790s, watercolour, 30.7 × 24.1 cm Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, DGD 38 f. 4

Major Robert Ross, an officer of Marines, had arrived with the First Fleet in 1788. He was a most unpopular and antagonistic member of the community at Sydney Cove and in an effort to defuse or avoid his constant animosity, Phillip dispatched Ross to Norfolk Island in March 1790 as Lieutenant Governor. After 21 difficult months, Ross was finally recalled to Sydney Cove in December 1791. In a matter of only days after returning, and before leaving for England on the Gorgon, Ross had an altercation with a newly arrived Captain of the New South Wales Corps and fought a duel. Ross’s interest in natural history in New South Wales would hardly have been guessed at if not for this small set of drawings. Lambert’s Volume 5 includes nine copies of drawings received from Major Robert Ross, all incomplete. They are repeated, again incomplete, by Bauer in his set of copies. It is a little as if no one dared press on in the absence of a specimen or a complete drawing for comparison. Very beautiful complete versions of the same drawings do exist. They are part of yet another set of unsigned drawings, in the Mitchell Library, that have long been attributed to George Raper.12 As the only complete versions of these particular watercolours, they must surely be given primacy, so who could have drawn them? Acquired from a London dealer in 1911, along with a set of fish drawings, their previous owner, actor Herbert Shelley, had stated that the drawings had been attributed to George Raper by Alfred Burton Rendle, Keeper of Botany at London’s Natural History

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Franz, overshadowed by the ‘excellent reputation’10 of his younger brother, Ferdinand Bauer, had been appointed the first botanical illustrator at Kew Gardens in 1790 by Sir Joseph Banks. He had also worked with English botanist John Lindley on a classic of botany, Illustrations of Orchidaceous Plants (1830–38). Bauer’s interest in drawing these orchids from New South Wales then is not unexpected. What is a little surprising is that Bauer’s drawings in Göttingen are described as ‘22 Orchideous Plants from near Port Jakson [sic] New Holland by Captain Paterson’. And, like Lambert’s Volume 4, Bauer’s drawings have also been laid down on blue blotting paper. Bauer’s are superior copies of Paterson’s original drawings. His annotations indicate that at least 14, but quite likely more, of the drawings in Lambert’s Volume 5 are by William Paterson. Still other copies in Bauer’s album have been annotated ‘Major Ross delin’. These are a match for yet another set of drawings held in the Linnean Society and annotated by Lambert as being ‘from Major Ross’. These drawings from or by Robert Ross raise other relationships. Seemingly once part of the papers of James Edward Smith, he acknowledged drawings sent by Ross in his A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland (1793) indicating they were probably received by Smith, or Lambert and forwarded to Smith, at least as early as 1793. Smith’s published drawing of the red five-corner (Styphelia tubiflora), was described by Smith as ‘taken from a drawing, obligingly communicated by the late Mr. Ross’. 11

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1 Possibly William Dawes, No. 1: Bauera rubioides; no. 2: Golden donkey orchid (Diursis aurea), 1788–91?, watercolour, 56.5 × 42 cm Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 17, f. 16

2 Artist unknown, Golden donkey orchid (Diursis aurea), 1791?, watercolour Ross Set, Linnean Society, London

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3 Artist unknown, Golden donkey orchid (Diursis aurea), 1793?, incomplete watercolour, 31.7 × 19.1 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 211

4 Franz Bauer, Fig. 1 Golden donkey orchid (Diursis aurea), Fig. 2 Diursus possibly platichila, 1793, watercolour Franz Bauer Papers, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen, Bauer Portfolio F, f. 2

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Possibly William Dawes, Purple donkey orchid (Diursis punctata or possibly alba), with Golden donkey orchid detail (Diursis aurea), 1790, watercolour, 48 x 29.3 cm Doody Collection, Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, DL PXX 1, Series 2 f.4

between Pitt Water and the Sea, by Lieut. William Dawes of the Marines 20th September, 1790’, the artist has also included a second, smaller drawing on the same sheet, of a yellow orchid labelled ‘Another species’. A further note reads: ‘NB Both species, with others, are not unfrequently seen in other parts.’ [image p. 208] Watkin Tench recorded in his Complete account of the settlement at Port Jackson (1793) that in September 1790, he, George Worgan and William Dawes went on an excursion to Broken Bay and Pittwater, and that they took soil specimens back to Sydney Cove. Tench made no mention of any botanical collecting, nor is there any mention that Dawes drew any of the natural history they encountered. It seems likely though, that the purple and yellow orchids which he inscribed and dated that same month were seen and collected at Pittwater during this excursion and possibly drawn on the spot from specimens on their return to Sydney Cove. Among all members of the First Fleet, Dawes more than any other is remarkable for his genuine interest in the Aboriginal people and his concern that they be treated fairly and with humanity. Two of his notebooks have been preserved recording vocabulary, phrases and expressions in the language of the Sydney region, with English translations and explanations. His notebooks reflect the ‘Grammatical knowledge’ that was one of many attributes and skills astronomer William Bayly praised in Dawes. Written in Dawes’s hand, his vocabularies are also one of the best sources for identifying his handwriting. The inscription on the purple donkey orchid matches Dawes’s hand in his notebooks perfectly.

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Museum. As with most of the collections though, this set includes the work of more than a single artist. One of these artists has produced the only complete watercolours of those works which appear, unfinished, among the drawings of Ross, Lambert and Bauer. These finished works are particularly skilful and delicate in a way that does not suggest the work of Raper who usually depicts botanical subjects as part of a composition that includes other botanical and ornithological subjects. Only one of Raper’s signed drawings features a botanical subject in isolation, a rock lily (Dendrobium speciosum). The inclusion of carefully depicted dead or torn ends of leaves is unusual and is a feature particular to this unnamed but talented artist [image 4 p. 203]. Other features include the delicate use of purples and tans, and long, continuous lines in stems, shaded on the left. The drawings have been annotated in pencil by James Edward Smith suggesting the high likelihood that Lambert had also had access to them. Included are a number of the orchids which were of interest to Bauer. The trail of orchid drawings from the early days of the colony is one that bears some consideration. Only one dated drawing of an orchid exists among these collections, interfiled with the Norfolk Island drawings by convict John Doody, made for William Paterson. This particular drawing is not by Doody and the orchid it depicts, the purple donkey orchid (Diursis punctata), is not native to Norfolk Island. Not only has it been dated, it has perhaps also been signed by the artist. Inscribed ‘A species of orchis, found growing in vast quantities on the sheep downs

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Artist unknown, Christmas Bush (Ceratopetalum gummiferum), 1788–94, watercolour, 47.2 × 29.3 cm Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, DGD 38 f. 1

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Artist unknown, Christmas Bush (Ceratopetalum gummiferum), 1788–94, watercolour, 34.5 × 22.8 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 466

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James Sowerby, Christmas Bush (Ceratopetalum gummiferum), 1794, 27.5 x 23 cm, hand coloured engraving From Zoology and Botany of New Holland and the isles adjacent: the zoological part/by George Shaw, ... the botanical part; by James Edward Smith. Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

there be a body of work that might be attributed to William Dawes? In 1791 Dawes had followed his conscience and openly refused to take part in a raid ordered by Phillip to slaughter and bring back the heads of six Aboriginal people in retaliation for the killing of Phillip’s gamekeeper, John McEntire. Speared in December 1790 by Pemulwuy, who had led a campaign of resistance against the British, McEntire had died of his wounds in January. WatkinTench, who led the raid, had noted that the Aboriginal people all showed such an aversion to McEntire that he suspected the gamekeeper of injuring or shooting them. His own sense of Christian propriety seemingly unaffected by the nature of Phillip’s orders, Reverend Richard Johnson persuaded Dawes to comply. In the event the heavily laden Marines were no match for the fleetness of the Aboriginal people on their home ground and the mission was a complete failure from a military perspective. No one was injured or killed. Though their hearts seemed not to have been in the task, for Colebee, who was known to the Marines, was an easy target as he shared a meal and slept in the Marines’ camp unharmed. Dawes’s personal sense of justice and his objections to Phillip’s use of brute military force against the Aboriginal people weighed on him. Phillip’s response to Dawes’s insubordination was predictable. Ordained more by the need to preserve order and control than by humanity, when Dawes requested to stay on as a settler in the colony at the end of his tour of duty, Phillip gave him a choice. He was

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Dawes has never been considered a First Fleet artist so what evidence might there be that he not only drew, but drew as skillfully as these drawings suggest? Bayly, who had sailed on Cook’s second and third voyages, was well acquainted with Dawes and wrote to Sir Joseph Banks in 1786 convinced that the young Marine would be ‘a very usefull man’ to sail with the rumoured convict fleet to New South Wales. Bayly’s list of Dawes’s attributes was impressive. A ‘tolerable good Astronomer’, Dawes built an observatory at Sydney Cove, located at today’s Dawes Point. He was skilled in mathematics, and had studied mineralogy, fossils and plants. He understood Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian and had a knowledge of grammar, not an obvious fit for a convict colony but one that, in the end, served him very well in recording Aboriginal language in New South Wales. Dawes had studied botany ‘some considerable time’ and in New South Wales he taught botany to Elizabeth Macarthur. He also, asserted Bayly, ‘draws very well’. It is, of course, impossible to know exactly what Bayly’s interpretation of drawing very well might have meant. But whoever did draw the beautiful watercolours of orchids that have been annotated by Dawes, certainly did draw very well.13 So, could the drawing of the Purple Donkey Orchid not only have been annotated and dated by Dawes, might it actually have been drawn by Dawes? More than this, if Dawes drew and drew well, would there likely be more than this one drawing. Could

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Artist unknown, Westringia Eremicola, c. 1790s, watercolour, 31 × 19.5 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 64

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free to remain and settle at Sydney Cove but only on the condition that he apologised for his dereliction. For Dawes there was no choice and he left the colony, along with most of the Marines, in the Gorgon in December 1791. He sailed with Major Robert Ross. And this, perhaps, brings us full circle, back to the drawings received by Smith and Lambert in London in 1793, annotated as ‘from Major Ross’. The Ross drawings are of plants from the region around Sydney Cove rather than Norfolk Island where Ross had spent the previous 21 months. They include a number of orchids which seem to have been observed more frequently after Ross’s departure from Sydney Cove, if Dawes’s annotation recording a first sighting in September 1790 is accepted. Even before Ross left Sydney Cove, the lives and duties of Ross and Dawes probably did not overlap very much. Dawes was busy building his observatory, preparing to observe a comet that was anticipated in 1788 though failed to arrive, and likely trying to keep out of Ross’s way. Ross was busy building antagonism towards Phillip and was sent to Norfolk Island and so left Sydney Cove in March 1790. Dawes annotated and possibly drew the purple donkey orchid in September 1790, during Ross’s absence on Norfolk Island. Sydney was a small community in 1791 when the Gorgon sailed for home. The number of people likely to have been engaged in natural history was smaller still, certainly small enough for them to have been familiar with each other’s drawings. On board a homeward bound ship, the community was further reduced. Six of Ross’s incomplete drawings appear to have

been copied from completed watercolours in the fine and accomplished set wrongly attributed to George Raper, bearing the same style markers as the orchid annotated by Dawes in September 1790: the same palette of purples and tans, the same long lines in the stems, the same shading on the left side of the plant. It was only really on the return voyage, on the Gorgon, that Ross and Dawes spent an extended period in proximity to each other. Marines had comparatively few shipboard duties to occupy them, allowing Ross the opportunity to inspect the drawings of his junior officer and to have copies made for himself. So if Dawes is the artist of the much copied orchids, Bayly’s assessment was certainly correct: Dawes did draw very well indeed. The Christmas bush (Ceratopetalum gummiferum) [images pp. 210–11] was notable in New South Wales because it was the only timber found that would float and was therefore useful for boats. This was noted again and again in First Fleet letters and accounts and repeated by James Edward Smith in Specimen of the Botany of New Holland: ‘This, Mr White informs us … is the only wood of the country that will swim in water.’ There were many aspects of New South Wales that seemed to turn the botanical world upside down, at once intoxicating and disorienting, and the Christmas bush seems to have been one of them. In describing it, Smith observed:

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running head first fleet

Artist unknown, Westringia Eremicola, c. 1790s, watercolour, 23.1 × 18.1 cm Ducie Collection, National Library of Australia, Canberra, nla.picvn3579662

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Artist unknown, Scented Milk Vine (Marsdenia suaveolens), c. 1790s, watercolour, 31.5 × 18.3 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 97

When a botanist first enters on the investigation of so remote a country as New Holland, he finds himself as it were in a new world. He can scarcely meet with any certain fixed points from whence to draw his analogies; and even those that appear most promising, are frequently in danger of misleading instead of informing him. Whole tribes of plants, which at first sight seem familiar to his acquaintance, as occupying links in Nature’s chain, on which he has been accustomed to depend, prove, on a nearer examination, total strangers, with other configurations, other economy, and other qualities; not only all the species that present themselves are new, but most of the genera and even natural orders.14

Smith’s was the first book devoted entirely to the botany of New South Wales and included many of the first published illustrations of a number of Australian species of plants. He noted that some of the book’s engravings had been taken from coloured drawings, made on the spot, and sent by John

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White to his friend and publisher, Thomas Wilson.15 Of the remaining drawings in Volume 5, some are very poorly executed. A further three appear to have been copied directly from the set of small botanical drawings

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Artist unknown, Scented Milk Vine (Marsdenia suaveolens), c. 1790s, watercolour, 23.6 × 18.8 cm Ducie Collection, National Library of Australia, Canberra, nla.pic-vn3579711

running head first fleet

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Port Jackson Painter, Rock orchid (Dendrobium speciosum), 1788–94, watercolour, 41.4 x 27.2 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 449

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Artist unknown, possibly William Paterson, Rock orchid (Dendrobium speciosum), 1790s, watercolour, 31.8 x 19.1 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney PXD 1098, vol 5. f. 222

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Artist unknown, A wild Dog or Dingo of N.S. Wales, 1797, monochrome wash, 28 × 20 cm Pulteney Set, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, PXA 678/1

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in the Ducie Collection [images pp. 214–17, 221], strongly suggesting that these also passed through Lambert’s hands. Others show the style traits of allied professions particularly the more decorative techniques of ceramics painting. Typically characterised by more dispersed arrangements of flowers and leaves, they hint at previous occupations of convict artists. Even in England, it seems, reputable draughtsmen such as Sydenham Edwards also worked, periodically, as painters of ceramics.16 Lambert’s generosity with his drawings and specimens extended to having copies made for friends. As part of the circle of natural historians centred around the Linnean Society, and one of Lambert’s oldest and dearest friends, Richard Pulteney would have had access to all Lambert’s collections. The 15 botanical and zoological drawings, all Australian, prepared for Pulteney and sent to him by Lambert would seem to be the least contentious of Lambert’s copies. Early in 1799 Pulteney noted the receipt of Lambert’s ‘little quarto of botanical Drawings’.17 Some of the drawings have close links with White’s Watling Collection. The copies received by Pulteney include a compelling wash drawing

of a chained dingo. Annotated ‘A wild Dog or Dingo of N.S. Wales the Property of J. White Esq.r Surgeon General to the Teritory’, Pulteney’s copy has been embellished to include not only the heavy chain evident in the ‘Lambert Drawings’ but also a quite substantial wooden doghouse. The idea of domesticating Australian animals, especially the dingo, was not new. Dingoes and kangaroo joeys had been brought into the colony and kept as pets from the earliest days of the settlement. Unlikely to have been a priority in New South Wales, the doghouse was no doubt a folly of Lambert’s English copyist. Dingoes had been engraved for Phillip’s publication in 1789, and also for John White’s in 1790. Both accounts speak of the dingo’s wildness, ferocity and intractability. Phillip sent one as a present to Evan Nepean who, as Under Secretary of State, had supported his appointment as Governor of New South Wales and been involved in the preparations for the sailing of the First Fleet. White thought them the ‘wolf of the country’ and ‘very ill-natured and vicious’. Aboriginal Arabanoo, on the other hand, when first taken into the colony after his kidnap in December 1788, was more cautious and fearful of the settlement’s domestic dogs.18

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Artist unknown, Love creeper (Comesperma volubile), 1790s, watercolour, 31.5 × 18.6 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 176

Most of Pulteney’s copies do not occur in White’s Watling Collection. Mainly botanical drawings, reflecting Lambert and Pulteney’s primary interest, the drawings have been copied and annotated from Lambert’s own versions in Volume 5. Pulteney had the drawings bound into his copy of Smith’s A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland which is how they appeared on the market in a 1981 book sale. They have since been removed from their volume and sold separately. The years in Sydney Cove and on Norfolk Island were notable for the company of artists, draughtsmen and allied tradespeople, despite so many of them remaining unidentified. That the considerable artistic ability of William Dawes has gone unnoticed for so long, is testament to the murkiness that comes from the tangle

of large numbers of unsigned and unacknowledged drawings, complicated by intricate networks of sharing and copying. The likelihood that techniques were absorbed within small networks of informal tuition, an extension of the form of art training at least some of them would have received, seems to be supported by the extent of copying that clearly took place not only in England but also in New South Wales. For some, precisely their situation in a small, isolated community allowed them to practise and hone their skills through extensive copying, the sharing of drawing materials, through efforts at self-education and self-improvement, through, if you like, a defacto drawing academy in New South Wales.

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Artist unknown, Love creeper (Comesperma volubile), 1790s, watercolour, 23.1 × 18.2 cm Ducie Collection, National Library of Australia, Canberra, nla.pic-vn3579898

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chap ter 8

years of decline The queerest old mortal Asa Gray, Letters, vol. 1, p. 111

Artist unknown, Britania, 1790s, watercolour, 31.4 × 19.2 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 5

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Aylmer Bourke Lambert made it his business to move into the orbit of almost every influential figure in the world of natural history and was himself well enough known and highly enough regarded that they also wanted to become acquainted with him. Today, his is anything but a household name but in the late 18th century, he knew virtually everyone in natural history circles. Regarded as an invariably generous man, Lambert was also a canny and judicious operator who wanted to understand the whole world of natural history, and to own a piece of it. Towards the end of his long life though, despite his extensive connections, he found himself practically alone and virtually forgotten. After a long illness, Catherine Lambert had died in 1828, the same year as Lambert’s great friend, James Edward Smith. Richard Pulteney had died years earlier, in 1801, John Latham in 1837, the Duke of Marlborough, formerly Lord Blandford, lived until 1840. The previously bustling London house in Lower Grosvenor Street became much quieter. After about 1836, visits to Boyton House, his country estate in Wiltshire, ceased. Lambert’s hardworking and highly competent librarian, David Don — who had managed his collections since 1820 — had been dismissed in 1836 apparently for marrying Lambert’s housekeeper or cook!1 With the exception of Robert Brown, the Earl of Derby and Sir William Hooker, Lambert had outlived his closest friends. Around 1828, he took a house at Kew for part of the year. There were frequent visits to the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland at Syon House, across the Thames from Kew. Sir Thomas Mitchell paid a long

visit in 1840, only days before sailing with his large family to return to Australia and resume his role as Surveyor General. But Lambert felt the comparative isolation of Kew, of encroaching old age, and the separation from the lively world of natural history. His mind ‘almost starved’ he thanked John Sims, a fellow founding member of the Linnean Society all those years ago, for his long and interesting letter, the first Lambert had received ‘from any Botanical friend since I left Town’.2 An old-style, eighteenth century gentleman collector, Lambert lived on into the Victorian era until, by the end of his long life, he seemed outdated. Indeed, so defined was Lambert by the perceptions, taste and occupations of his age that not only did he outlive his friends, he ‘outlived his own era’. At 77 and virtually alone, he had become ‘the queerest old mortal’ the young American botanist Asa Gray had ever set eyes on when they met in 1839. In 1838, appointed the first professor at the University of Michigan, which at that stage did not even have any buildings, Gray was sent on a year’s leave in Europe. He was to develop the university’s library collection. It was during this period that he met many leading natural historians including Aylmer Bourke Lambert.3 Physically and indeed mentally frail during the later years of his life, and with a drastically diminished fortune, Lambert nonetheless remained an insatiable collector and continued to amass specimens at every opportunity. Increasingly, though, after David Don’s dismissal, management of them became less organised, more haphazard.

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Sydney Bird Painter, Little Grebe (Pocideps ruficollis), 1790s, watercolour, 46.5 × 29.6 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226, f. 95

There were still visitors on his regular day at home, Saturday. And there were still loyal friends, especially Robert Brown, and some staff including ‘the funny old lady’, Mrs Raw, who helped with his collections following Don’s dismissal and seemed ‘quite as enthusiastic as old Lambert himself’.4 He continued to attend the Royal Society but after 1836 no longer attended the Linnean Society ‘for fear of meeting Don, and also because he is a little piqued, perhaps at not being made president’. Following his dismissal by Lambert, David Don had been appointed librarian for the Linnean Society and, after Smith’s death in 1828, his friend the Earl of Derby, rather than Lambert, had been voted President.5 Lambert maintained an extended network of correspondents until the end

of his life but by now, in the 1820s, many of his contacts were from the next generation of natural historians, scientists and explorers. It was from Phillip Parker King, the son of the former Governor of the colony of New South Wales, Philip Gidley King, that Lambert received letters and specimens ‘all interesting and many very new’. Lambert had first met and received specimens from Phillip Parker King’s parents in 1808. Similarly, the young naval officer John Septimus Roe, back in London after assisting the younger King in his survey of Australia’s coastline on four separate voyages from 1817 to 1822, was invited to dinner by ‘the old boy’, as he referred to Lambert.6 His acquaintance of many years continued with former Prime Minister, Baron William Wyndham Grenville, and with many collectors worldwide. His old friend, German collector and explorer, Alexander von Humboldt, who Lambert had first met

running head first fleet

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Artist unknown, Azure Kingfisher (Alcedo azurea), 1790s, watercolour, 42 × 26.5 cm ‘Lambert’s Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 2, f. 86

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in 1814, wrote that he was hard at work on his geography of plants, still complaining of his associate, Frenchman Aimé Bonpland, who Humboldt alleged took off not only with his own specimens but also with Humboldt’s. There were endless letters accompanying or promising specimens. Australia and his Australian collections continued to hold his interest and as new colonies opened up he received seeds and specimens also from the west coast, known as New Holland. In 1836 he was ‘very busy arranging my numerous collections of Lewin Land, Van Diemens & New Caledonia plants which are very fine’. The following year he was ‘very much engaged with arranging my New Holland plants’. A few years later he was particularly keen to see Sir William Hooker’s Swan River specimens from western Australia.7 Collections from Van Diemen’s Land were purchased from Austrian John Lhotsky who, commissioned by Ludwig I of Bavaria, had been collecting in Australia from 1832 until 1838. Other Australian specimens arrived from George Weston Gunning, a natural history collector and Lieutenant with Governor Lachlan

Macquarie’s 73rd Regiment in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. Lambert remained a generous friend and associate. In 1836, naturalist Philip Barker Webb, who worked and collected in the Canary Islands, wrote thanking Lambert for an unnamed but ‘most magnificent present … it has already excited the astonishment of my botanical visitors, who know not which they should most admire, the splendor of the work, or the generosity of the donor’.8 The following year Webb thrilled Lambert with an introduction to ‘so celebrated a person’ as French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville. During three years on an expedition to the Falkland Islands, South America, New Zealand, Australia and New Guinea from 1822–25, d’Urville had amassed an imposing collection of plants and animals.9 Lambert spent a lifetime sharing his interests and his latest exploits, exchanging ideas, commenting on collectors and collections and topical news of the day; he gossiped, complained and exaggerated, forwarded letters and specimens on to others, coveted, divided and shared collections. But Lambert was not just another independently wealthy collector with ample time to

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Artist unknown, Pacific Heron (Ardea pacifica), 1790s, watercolour, 42 × 26.5 cm ‘Lambert’s Drawings’, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 2, f. 85

devote to his interests. His pleasure in collecting was not derived simply from ownership. Electrified by the thrill of the chase, he was equally delighted by both the intellectual and the social aspects of collecting, his letters echo the constant refrain: ‘I will send you specimens if you wish’. Along with the friendships, cooperation and sharing, came petty jealousies and rivalries around claims of being the first to raise new, previously unknown specimens. Lambert took inordinate pleasure, for instance, in reporting to the surprised and pleased Robert Brown that ‘not one word was true’ of the claim that Lady Essex had grown two unnamed New Holland plants that she had been credited with. When shown the ‘figures & the account’ of the new plants claimed for her, her gardener was ‘quite surprised & assured [Lambert] he never saw the plants & [never] did they ever grow at Lady Essexes’.10 His life models the capacity for natural history to draw people together, to bond people who shared common interests, purposes and values. Yet for all this collecting and networking, most of Lambert’s busy life was lived away from public view and the more so as the years wore on. He generally lived quietly, entirely caught up with his collections and the world of botany. Private certainly, though not reclusive. He remained a social and sociable person though increasingly less able to seek out company or to extend hospitality.

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In the late winter of 1840 Lambert devoted As the age of the amateur collector himself to the cause of saving Kew. He wrote to progressively gave way to the increasing his contacts and enlisted the help of people ‘who professionalisation and specialisation of science and moved in the highest circles’; everyone, he wrote, ‘is natural history into the narrower disciplines that we up in Arms about it’. He lobbied his friends to take know today — zoology, botany, geology, ethnography, the crusade to Parliament, to speak to the House in anthropology — large private collections such as support of saving the gardens, Lambert’s were often at risk. and to try to interest Queen Fortunes were often lost in the T h e fat e Victoria in the cause.11 pursuit of natural history and o f K e w a n d Kew was saved and while great care was taken in life, established as a national botanic the fragility and vulnerability f i na n c i a l garden, now one of the greatest of collections and gardens of i m p er at i v e s in the world. Today it is almost great significance were often impossible to imagine it most apparent in death when otherwise as Lambert himself rejoiced in 1840: ‘I am vast collections were all too often sold, dispersed or happy to say Kew is quite safe. It was never meant irretrievably lost. to be otherways’.12 Better still, in March 1841, Sir Even the world renowned gardens at Kew were William Hooker, perhaps Lambert’s most loyal friend not free from economic rationalisation and cost during this period of his life, moved from Glasgow cutting. In 1840 Kew was under threat of closure after to Kew to take up his position as the garden’s first a review of royal funding targeted the gardens as an official director. Later executor of Lambert’s will, obvious way to save money. The deaths of Sir Joseph Hooker had been annoyed at the sale of Lambert’s Banks and King George III in the same year, 1820, had letters as part of his estate that were acquired by left the gardens in decline, underfunded and without the 13th Earl of Derby. Hooker withheld some two of its main champions. During the subsequent volumes of letters from the sale and deposited them reigns of George IV until 1830, and William IV until in the archives at Kew Gardens. With his collections 1837, Kew Gardens were neglected in favour of other dispersed, Lambert’s letters are the most revealing royal gardens at St James and Buckingham Palaces. and detailed picture of his relentless, tireless and Foreign collectors, appointed by Banks, were gradually lifelong pursuit of natural history.13 withdrawn until Kew was no longer actively collecting. Lambert’s own vast collection, no exception In 1840 the gardens were under threat of closure, the to such vulnerabilities, was broken up and sold plants to be transferred to the Horticultural Society or as individual lots in an effort to settle his own to Regents Park.

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inordinate debts. His financial affairs were in chaos, probably partly from neglect, and there were no direct heirs. His business interests in the West Indies had no doubt been eroded following the abolition of slavery in Britain in 1807 and then the West Indies in 1833. The reality of split and dispersed collections only serves to increase the value to science and history of what has survived today. Many private collections did end up, in part or whole, in public institutions and now form the basis of some of the world’s greatest museums and libraries, the bedrock of contemporary, modern research.14

Sydney Bird Painter, Laughing Jackass (Dacelo gigas), 1790s, watercolour, 46.5 × 29.6 cm Sydney Bird Painter Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 226, f. 75

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Port Jackson Painter, Hook-billed shrike, Grey butcher bird (Cracticus torquatus), Indigenous name ‘Karro-bee-rang’, 1788–94, watercolour, 21.3 × 17.5 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 116

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It is intriguing to realise that John White’s father of Welsh naturalist, Thomas Pennant? In his letter, impressive Watling Collection of Australian drawings, Latham noted he had seen copies of all White’s bird the collection that started it all and fuelled his interest drawings in ‘Lambert’s Hands, ye drawings being lent in Australian natural history, is not listed in the to him by Mr White’. Is this why Lambert had White’s catalogue of sale for Lambert’s library. collection copied? What would be the need for copies if Lambert is known to have given away collections the originals were Lambert’s to keep?18 We know that in 1805 and to have exchanged countless The sharing Lambert was still in possession individual specimens or small lots of White’s collection. In April from his herbarium during his a n d m ov em en t of that year he read a paper on lifetime. Generally it was duplicates but occasionally also unique o f c o lle c t i o n s a previously unknown species of kangaroo, the Silver or Brush plants. In 1816, he presented three kangaroo noting that White’s collection of drawings ‘are hundred Chinese specimens to Swiss botanist Augustin now in my possession’. So if the drawings were given on de Candolle. In 1819 there was a further gift to de Candolle and another, around the same time, to loan to Lambert in 1797 it was a very long loan.19 When, why and to whom the collection passed English botanist, Thomas Nuttall.15 Periodically he transferred material to the when it left Lambert’s care, whether it was returned to collections of the Linnean Society or Kew Gardens. White, sold or given to a third party is unknown. That In 1810, Lambert donated ‘Several Specimens of Bird the collection no longer belonged to Lambert at the end Skins collected in New South Wales by Mr W. Westall’ of his life though seems certain. 16 to the Museum of the Linnean Society. In November It often pays to be cautious of provenance, 1841 he ‘presented his splendid collection of Cacti and particularly if relying on tradition or family memory the Whole of his other rare plants, which he has been where so much can be presumed, forgotten or so many years collecting with so much judgment and embellished. In 1902 when White’s collection — not yet 17 research to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew’. The known as the Watling Collection — was purchased by Gardens were on the brink of a period of renaissance the Natural History Museum London from James Lee, under the direction of Sir William Hooker. Lambert the family’s belief was that it was Lee’s eponymous great was in decline. The gift made sense. grandfather, James Lee of the Hammersmith nursery, But what are the chances of Lambert giving who had sent Watling to New South Wales to collect away John White’s collection of drawings? And why? plants and seeds for him. Did White only lend the collection to Lambert, as This could not have been so. Watling was suggested by Latham in a letter to David Pennant, transported to New South Wales rather at His Majesty’s

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Possibly William Paterson, Parrot’s beak orchid (Pterostylis nutans), 1790s, watercolour, 31.4 × 19.2 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 213

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pleasure than James Lee’s. The real story of the collection’s provenance before 1902, and when the collection came into the Lee family, is unknown. But there are clues. In 1949, Frederick Sawyer, Zoological Librarian at the Natural History Museum, noted that some drawings in the General History of Birds, were described by author John Latham as from the collection of a London jeweller and dealer in natural history, John Francillon. In every instance Latham gave the locality of the bird as New South Wales. Sawyer suggested the possibility that the drawings of birds from that area in ‘the so called “Watling” collection … might have been in the possession of Francillon at the date Latham examined them’.20 Published in ten volumes, Latham’s General History of Birds (1821–28) references more than 35 drawings owned by Francillon. His descriptions of Francillon’s drawings often quoted the ‘native name’ and exact field notes as they appear on drawings from White’s Watling Collection. In volume 1 of his General History of Birds, Latham described the radiated falcon. It is probably scarce, he noted, in describing one from New Holland from ‘Among the drawings of Mr. Francillon’. At the time this

description was taken, ‘only one had been met with, nailed to the side of a settler’s hut; it is said to fly with incredible swiftness’. In the Watling Collection, John White’s notes on the reverse of the drawing of the radiated falcon describe: ‘The Skin of this Bird I found nail’d up to a Settlers Hut, it is the only one of the kind ever seen — The Drawing is a faith-ful Copy — The settler who shot it says the Iris was Brown, and remarked that he never saw any Bird fly with such swiftness — Its Claws … were long small & sharp when he took it up, it drove quite thro’ the end of his Finger — A new Falcon.’21 In volume 2 of the General History, Latham refers to the hook-billed shrike in a drawing in ‘the collection of Mr. Francillon’ where ‘it is called Karro-bee-rang’, the name also used in White’s Watling Collection.22 In the second Supplement (volume 8) of Latham’s earlier publication, General Synopisis of Birds (1801), that introduced many Australian birds for the first time, Latham frequently referenced drawings owned by Lambert that also matched descriptions from White’s Watling Collection. This earlier publication made no references to New South Wales drawings owned by Francillon. In all likelihood, Latham referenced White’s Watling Collection at least twice, once while it was in Lambert’s hands when he was preparing the earlier second Supplement to the General Synopsis, and the second time, during the years spent preparing his General History when, seemingly, the collection belonged to Francillon. This could also explain the two sets of

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Port Jackson painter, Radiated Falcon or Red goshawk (Erythrotriorchis radiatus), 1788–94, watercolour, 31.1 × 21.6 cm John White’s Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, London, Watling Drawing, no. 103

annotations that appear on most of the bird drawings in White’s Watling Collection, written in Latham’s hand but in two different inks. A dealer in bird drawings, John Francillon knew both Latham and Lambert. In 1792 Latham had examined and made notes on John Abbot’s American bird drawings when Francillon was acting as agent for their sale. Lambert knew Francillon well enough that in 1804 he lent him a set of drawings via John Latham, their mutual friend. When at one point the exact location of the drawings cannot be accounted for, Latham is concerned not only that the drawings might be mislaid or lost, but also for his friendship with Lambert: ‘no value can be put on drawings or ABL and so no recompense made for them’.23

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Artist unknown, Hyacinth Orchid (Dipodium), 1790s, watercolour, 31.4 × 19.2 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 215

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Francillon too, had a collecting interest in Australia. To secure a piece of Australia, one needed to go there, be well enough connected with people already there, or to send someone there to collect for you. In 1791, when Sir Joseph Banks sent a young man, David Burton, to New South Wales as a natural history collector, supposedly in Banks’s sole employment, Francillon made his own separate arrangement with Burton. In exchange for fitting him out with large, specially corked storage boxes, many packets of nets, pins and ‘everything in plenty that he could want’, Burton agreed to collect insects and butterflies for Francillon. Before he left, Francillon took Burton out in the country several times and taught him how to collect insects and expand their wings. Sponsoring Burton in this way was a risk and when the unforeseen happened and Burton died in the settlement from infection and trauma shortly after a selfinflicted gunshot wound in April 1792 — he accidentally shot himself in the hand while passing through a rough crossing using his loaded rifle for support — it seemed as if Francillon had, indeed, lost his entire investment.

As was customary, Burton’s belongings were then sold by auction in the colony. Francillon’s boxes and the specimens intended for him were bought by John White and given by him to an unnamed friend in London as a gift. White’s friend in turn showed them to his good friend, John Francillon, who instantly recognised his own boxes. When told the story, his friend unhesitatingly gave him first choice of the duplicates. So all was not lost except, of course, for Burton.24 The intersection of Francillon’s collecting interests in New South Wales, his role as agent for the sale of natural history drawings, and Latham’s references to drawings owned by Francillon which quote information from the Watling Collection, all indicated that Francillon could possibly at one time have owned White’s Watling Collection. While the sale catalogue of Lambert’s library indicated that he no longer owned the collection at his death, would a sale catalogue of Francillon’s library and collections show that when he died in 1816, he did own White’s drawings? Finding what appear to be the only two surviving copies of the 1817 catalogue of sale of John Francillon’s effects following his death in 1816 — one held in the General and Zoology Library of the Natural History Museum and the other in the Museum of Natural History Hope Library at Oxford University — it seemed too much to hope, and perhaps a little too easy, that one of the lots might fit the description of White’s collection of drawings. Not yet known as the Watling Collection, would the link to John White or to Lambert even be remembered?25

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His sale catalogue bears witness to the truly eclectic nature of Francillon’s interests. The usual library of valuable natural history books was supplemented by a variety of rare and beautiful birds elegantly grouped under glass cases; a large collection of British shells; and a mish mash of objects: birds eggs, silver Chinese filigrée work of fruits, a microscope, a cabinet of beautiful impressions of antique gems. The list of valuable curiosities goes on and on. One lot on the first day of the sale showed an interest in New South Wales and a possible connection with John White: polished foreign woods including

Well, possibly. When it was purchased by the Natural History Museum in 1902 until it was disbound in 1984, John White’s Watling Collection of drawings was also bound in a single large volume. The original binding no longer exists so there is no possibility of a trail of names or bookplates that might have revealed successive ownership. Francillon also knew James Lee, of Hammersmith. By 1817 and the Francillon sale, James Lee the elder had long since been succeeded in the nursery by his son, yet another James Lee. Could this James Lee have acquired White’s collection from the Francillon sale, and with the

These images spoke of fascination, acquisitiveness, and the quest for knowledge

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twenty specimens from New South Wales. John White is known to have sent lengths of New South Wales timber home to England, including to his patron Sir Andrew Snape Hamond.26 Then, on the second day of the sale, Lot 138: ‘A large Port folio Volume full of very interesting original Drawings on the Spot of the Scenery, Birds, Plants, Animals, &c. of New South Wales, an unique Collection’. Neither copy of the sale catalogue is annotated to include buyers’ names but the copy from the Natural History Museum is annotated to include the prices paid: this single volume of New South Wales drawings sold for an astonishing £25,14, the most expensive lot in the sale. Bingo?

passage of time and generations of sons named James Lee, family lore has forgotten or misinterpreted just which one of them acquired the collection and when? But why Lambert would have parted with this prized collection is not clear. Had White reclaimed them and passed, or sold, them to Francillon? It does not seem obvious why Lambert would have valued the drawings enough to have them copied but then parted with the originals. Unless they were only on loan as Latham had suggested. Or was it simply a matter of expediency? Had Lambert sold them to Francillon, an agent of natural history drawings, because of a decline in his financial position arising from losses in the West Indies? Did he need to fund another, more appealing or desirable collection?

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So caught up was Lambert with his collections since been lost in terms of species, habitat, biodiversity that he virtually became synonymous with them. The and traditional culture. They are significant for the sale of his library and specimens was like a reversal, documentation they provide of the flow of specimens, an unravelling of a lifetime of collecting. His identity drawings and information between the colony in so entwined with his collections, this might partly Australia and England. They speak to us of human explain his historical haziness — once the collection endeavour and of personal responses to a new and was dispersed, Lambert’s identity was different world. A b r i d g e t o also dissipated. He was his collection. These collections are partly The times had moved on and Lambert about how colonial experiences h i s t o r i ca l quite faded from view. can be turned into a more The Australian drawings accommodating vision that can k n o w led g e owned by Aylmer Bourke Lambert be ordered in terms of European were about knowledge, not art. They were, in no systems of classification and ideas about the world. In minor degree, small ambassadors for Australia in time, this helped Britain acclimatise to the idea of New Britain where popular support for the colony was not South Wales and for some to take it even further and guaranteed. They were valued as working tools, the decide to settle there. means by which knowledge of Australia found its way There is still so much that is unknown from into British books and museums and from there into those early years of the settlement in New South British consciousness. They were the very means of Wales. Answers exist to some of the more obvious opening up the colony of New South Wales to the rest questions. How were they governed? Harshly but also of the world. benignly even, at times, compassionately. Executions This rich legacy of drawings recorded the and floggings for seemingly small misdemeanours were natural world at a decisive moment in Australian usual enough but so were shortened working hours for history at a time when natural history illustration convicts in response to reduced rations, time to work was in the ascendancy. In the past these images spoke for themselves, and even land grants. of fascination, acquisitiveness, and the quest for How they lived? Uncertainly. Life was hard, the knowledge. Today they connect us with the natural ‘tyranny of distance’, the fear of starvation or of being world as it existed on the east coast of Australia at the forgotten were real. Yet despite this, more people were point of white settlement. occupied by natural history in New South Wales than Not only a record of what they found, with can yet be identified. It is the stories behind these the passage of time, drawings also functioned as a drawings that seduce, the stories of how the drawings benchmark for what had been achieved, and what has were produced and how they were handed on, bought

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Drawings 19–21 from John White’s Watling Collection before being disbound

Drawings 82–84 from John White’s Watling Collection before being disbound

Port Jackson Painter, View of Governor Phillips House, Sydney-Cove, Port Jackson, 1789–92, watercolour, 22.2 × x 30.8 cm

Port Jackson Painter, Kangaroo Rat (Perameles nasuta), 1788–94, watercolour, 18.9 × 32.2 cm

Thomas Watling, Partial view in NSW, facing to the North West, 1792–94, pen and ink, watercolour, 24.8 × 39.1 cm

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Port Jackson Painter, A View of Sydney Cove — Port Jackson March 7th 1792’, 1792, watercolour, 25.1 × 40.5 cm

Port Jackson Painter, Brown Marsupialmouse (Antechinus stuartii), 1788–94, watercolour, 31.8 × 22.6 cm Port Jackson Painter, Eastern native cat (Dasyurus viverrinus), 1788–94, watercolour, 17.3 × 28.6 cm

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Drawings 415–417 from John White’s Watling Collection before being disbound Port Jackson Painter, Banksia spinalosa, Indigenous name ‘Wallangra’, 1788–94, watercolour, 30.3 × 16.4 cm Port Jackson Painter, Honey Tree of New South Wales, Indigenous name ‘Wattangree’, 1788–94, watercolour, 37.8 × 25.4 cm Port Jackson Painter, A banksia, 1788–94, watercolour, 34.2 × 22.3 cm

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and sold, how drawings survived because they were valued, copied and shared by others or, sometimes, like Lambert’s, because they slipped into obscurity. Just as Collins, ‘wrote to beguile the tedium of many a heavy hour’, so it is possible to imagine that colonial artists drew and copied for the same reasons.27 What is surprising is not that copies of early colonial drawings exist but that there are quite so many suggesting that, while some of it was indeed about circulation and ensuring the safety and survival of drawings, the creation of copies might also have been about something quite different. Some might simply have been about self-improvement, less competent artists copying the work of their more talented peers.

Often produced in a comparatively private world, the very act of drawing offered a form of respite. Absorption in observing and drawing nature has always had the capacity to take people out of themselves. In New South Wales it offered the chance to rise above the reality and the harshness of everyday life. It provided a space for retreat, an opportunity to escape from the unprecedented pressures of distance, isolation, hunger and homesickness. The intense concentration required of drawing and of copying each other’s drawings, was a means of coming to terms with a new and startlingly different world, and perhaps of overcoming its fears and uncertainties — the fear of being forgotten, the ‘dread of perishing by famine [that] stares us in the face’.28 They show how for some, precisely because of their situation in a small, isolated community, skills could be practised and honed through sharing drawings and drawing materials, through a concerted effort at self-education and self-improvement through, if you like, a first de facto drawing academy in New South Wales. In the years after their creation the provenance of most collections of early Australian drawings has been lost or obscured. This loss of provenance, of historical context, is one of the main reasons that it has become so difficult to make drawings, artists, collectors and collections fit together. There comes a point in all these stories where one reaches not so much a dead end as a looseness, an unravelling of the story at a key moment. In a society where drawings were not routinely signed or acknowledged, where

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Artist unknown, Handsome flat-pea (Platylobium formosum), 1790s, 31.4 × 19.2 cm Lambert’s Derby Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, PXD 1098, vol. 5, f. 179

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protocols meant people were not named or remained anonymous because of rank or status, there quickly comes a point where, despite the interconnectedness, there is, on current information, nowhere else to take these stories. Today watercolour drawings of Australia’s early natural history are bought and sold as fine artwork at high prices. That these collections now attract new, different audiences long after the rationale of their original creation, speaks of their enduring value and legacy. And today’s audience, as well as bringing enormously complex references, experiences, knowledge and ideas to these images, is also in search of different information, different truths. Today they are examined for evidence of the early history of settlement and early race relations; they are searched for fragments of Indigenous language; they are scrutinised for evidence of environmental change. This was a critical, never-to-be-repeated moment when many species of fauna and flora in New South Wales were observed and described by colonists and Europeans for the first time. Some of these, such as the white gallinule, Norfolk Island’s Mount Pitt bird and the Lord Howe Island pigeon, would be endangered or extinct even before the 19th century had ended. Where in the past there had been wonder about the very existence of black swans, in the present there is wonder not that black swans exist but that their natural habitat was so widespread, their numbers so plentiful. That they existed on the very shores of Sydney Cove and were reported as being ‘seen frequently’, and ‘remarkable in point of number’,

upwards of three hundred at a time now seems almost fanciful and subtly alters our perception of the reality of our past.29 A handful of years later in 1804, such was the concern for the declining numbers of black swans on Tasmania’s Derwent River ‘through their having been of late much harassed and disturbed’, David Collins, now Lieutenant Governor in Van Diemen’s Land, ordered that ‘no person in or belonging to this Settlement do send any Boat or employ any means any further to molest these Birds which if a proper attention is paid to this order may return to their usual haunts’.30 The arrival of the First Fleet still resonates today. It remains the most profound political revolution ever to have taken place on the Australian continent. Its consequences far outstripped the immediate intentions of strategic British decision making to found a distant penal colony for Britain’s unwanted and to establish a strategic outpost for its navy. It propelled the Australian continent on a path that would lead from convict settlement to nationhood. At the same time, it sowed the seeds for the dispossession of a people and the future of Australia’s race relations. It laid the foundation for ways of responding to the land as awe inspiring or alienating, as endless resource or precious heritage. Through drawings it becomes possible to imagine the natural world of the Sydney basin in 1788, and wonder at the skill, determination and the vision of natural history collectors, and the circumstances and

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of making do and making more out of a situation, of the ordinary, work-a-day aspect of producing fine drawings. It is evidence that builds an image of the past, evidence of a remarkable fusion between two worlds. Drawings have a great capacity to beguile, to seduce and delight across time but perhaps their real power is their direct link to 1788, to the very people who stepped ashore, and to those who watched them, to the tangible closeness these collections bring us to an otherwise inaccessible world. And while much has been uncovered, so much of their magic, meaning and mystery remain, as yet, locked in these collections. In the end these drawings exist, in part, as a tribute to humanity’s incessant inquisitiveness about what lies outside our reach, what is beyond our knowledge and comprehension, and the compulsion to try to make sense of it. They are evidence of the enduring nature of human vitality and curiosity, of the need to push boundaries, to explore, and to try to understand the world and our place in it. At its core is a network of people, united across the years, committed to understanding and preserving collections, to pondering and questioning them. And at the centre for our story, is the likeable, somewhat eccentric figure of Aylmer Bourke Lambert.

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conditions under which they collected, drew, classified and documented. So many of these early drawings are copies but they are not just copies to be derided as lacking originality and authenticity. Which set of drawings can be considered to be inauthentic or inferior? To cast the many copies and versions in negative terms fails to recognise their primacy for their owners. The existence of two, three, four or sometimes more versions of a single drawing, the trail of sharing, copying, lend-ing, buying and selling, has redoubled the mystery and intrigue of Lambert’s Australian drawings. Attempting to reconstruct the trail of drawings now has been like moving the pieces in a multi-layered puzzle where all the pieces overlap and the layers intertwine. There are points where a promising trail frustratingly goes cold, there are dead ends and then, unexpectedly, there are pieces that fit together beautifully or, trickier, where they fit together but oddly. Lambert’s drawings demonstrate that colonisation was not just the physical and cultural occupation of the land, but intellectual engagement with it. The drawings and the particular combination of subject, words and ideas merge with the layers of information and knowledge brought by collections over many generations. All this matters because it speaks of where Australia has come from, of ambition and endeavour,

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notes In t r o duct i o n 1

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The term drawings is used throughout this book to refer to works created using watercolour paints. Original inscribed names have been used in captions and text. These often vary in drawings of the same bird or plant created by different artists or annotated by different hands over time. Modern common and Latin names have been added where known. Fisher, Clemency (ed.) (2002), A passion for natural history: The life and legacy of the 13th Earl of Derby, [Liverpool]: National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, pp. 121–35. Fisher (2002), A passion for natural history …, pp. 20–1. Smith, Bernard in Smith & Alwyne Wheeler (eds) (1988), The art of the First Fleet and other early Australian drawings, Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the British Museum (Natural History), p. 203.

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Lambert to Smith, 6 October 1806. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. Lambert to Smith, 15 October 1806. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. Smith, James Edward, in Andrews, Henry Charles (1797), The botanist’s repository: For new, and rare plants. Printed by T. Bensley, published by the author, vol. 1, London, opp. Pl. LXIX. Begun by Andrews, Botanist’s repository was issued in ten volumes from 1797 until 1812; it provided affordable images of plants for the amateur gardeners when the study of botany had become a ‘very

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general Amusement in this Country’. Dodd, Charles (1843), The annual biography: Being lives of eminent or remarkable persons, who have died within the year, MDCCCXLII, London, p. 20. Andrews (1797), The botanist’s repository, vol. 1, Pl. LXIX. Aylmer Bourke Lambert, Esq. F.R.S. F.A.S. One of the Vice Presidents of the Linnean Society. Engraved by W. Evans, from an original drawing by H. Edridge. Published 11 August 1810, by T. Cadell & W. Davies, Strand, London. After Henry Edridge (1769–1821). The most extensive biography of Lambert has been written by Hortense Miller (1970), ‘The herbarium of Aylmer Bourke Lambert. Notes on its acquisition, dispersal, and present whereabouts’, in Taxon: Journal of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, vol. 19, August, pp. 489–656. Vane-Wright, Richard Irwin & Hughes, Harold W. D. (2006), The Seymer Legacy: Henry Seymer and Henry Seymer Jnr of Dorset, and their entomological paintings: with a catalogue of butterflies and plants (1755–1783), Tresaith, UK: Forrest Text. Catherine Lambert to Smith, 9 February 1817. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. Catherine Lambert to Macleay, 27 July 1816. Ms 237c, Linn. Soc. Miller (1970), ‘The herbarium of Aylmer Bourke Lambert’, p. 539. Lambert to Macleay, 1 October 1817. Ms 237c, Linn. Soc. Miller (1970), ‘The herbarium of Aylmer Bourke Lambert’, p. 493. The first breadfruit voyage, under the command of William Bligh, ended unexpectedly in

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the now famous mutiny on the Bounty, on 28 April 1789. Andrews (1821), The botanist’s repository, vol. 7, opp. Pl. 531. Miller (1970), ‘The herbarium of Aylmer Bourke Lambert’, p. 489. In 1735, Linneas published his system of biological classification, based on the sexual system of plants, in Systema natura. Walker, Margot & Linnean Society of London (1988), Sir James Edward Smith, 1759–1828: First president of the Linnean Society of London, London: Linnean Society, pp. 7–10, 18, 27. Rudwick, M. J. S. (1985), The great Devonian controversy: The shaping of scientific knowledge among gentlemanly specialists, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 36. Lambert to Smith, 13 August 1801. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc.; Andrews (1821), The botanist’s repository, vol. 7. Lambert to Smith, 4 January 1808. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. Lambert to Smith, September 1810. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. Cassiobury survives today as a park; the house and all but one of the buildings no longer stand. Miller (1970), ‘The herbarium of Aylmer Bourke Lambert’, p. 495. Lambert to Smith, 27 February 1804. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. Quoted in Cooke, Ian K. S. (1992), ‘Whiteknights and the Marquis of Blandford’, Garden History, vol. 20, no. 1, p. 35. Lambert to Smith, 16 January 1806. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc.; Lambert to Smith, 30 August 1803. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. Lambert to Smith, 5 January

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1806. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. What remains of White Knights is now part of the main campus of Reading University. Don, David (1824), ‘The Lambertian herbarium’, appendix to A. B. Lambert, Description of the genus Pinus, vol. II, London: John Gale and R. Jennings. Lambert to Smith, 6 May 1801. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. Lambert to Smith, 5 October 1802. Smith papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. Lambert to Smith, 16 December 1803. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc.; Martin’s collection was later acquired by the British Museum (Natural History), London, in 1842 during the sale of Lambert’s herbarium. Lambert to Smith, 28 January 1805. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc.; Lambert, Aylmer Bourke (1810), ‘Some account of the herbarium of Professor Pallas’, in Transactions of the Linnaean Society, vol. 10, London: Linnaean Society, p. 256; Brown, Robert (1853), Read at the Anniversary Meeting, 24 May 1853, in Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 3 May 1853 to 24 May 1853, London: Linnaean Society, 1855, p. 231. When Lambert’s specimens were sold following his death in 1842, the greater part of Pallas’s collection was bought by the British Museum (Natural History), London. Lambert to Smith, 15 February 1809. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. Lambert to Smith, September 1810. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc.; Don (1824), ‘The Lambertian herbarium’, vol. 2. Lambert to Smith, 6 August 1814. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn.

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Soc.; Lambert to Smith, 12 February 1817, Linn. Soc. 38 Brown, Robert (1809) ‘On the 9 Proteaceae of Jussieu’, read 17 January 1809, Transactions of the Linnean Society of London (1810), London: Linnaean Society, p. 46. 10

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Governor Phillip to Botany Bay …, p. 121. White (1790), Journal of a voyage to New South Wales …, 18 November 1788. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 35.05. White to Mr Skill, 17 April 1790, in Gentlemen’s Magazine, 1 January 1791. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 36.09. Watling, Thomas (1794), Letters from an exile in Botany Bay, to his aunt in Dumfries …, Penrith, UK: Ann Bell, p. 13. Collins (1804), An account of the English colony …, 2nd ed., p. 466; Bradley (1786–92), A voyage to New South Wales, May 1791, p. 263, a138263. Phillip (1789), The voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay …, pp. 106–7. White (1790), Journal of a voyage to New South Wales … Smith, James Edward (1794), ‘Preface’, in Zoology and botany of New Holland and the isles adjacent: The zoological part/ by George Shaw, ... the botanical part by James Edward Smith; the figures by James Sowerby, London: Printed by J. Davis, published by J. Sowerby, p. viii. Blagden to Banks, 10 May 1789. f. 62. BL Add 33272; Star and Evening Advertiser, London, 2 June 1789, no. 339 (this reference supplied by Michael Rosenthal). On 24 December 1789, the Guardian, attempting to collect ice for fresh water from a passing iceberg, was buffeted against an iceberg. The ship lost its rudder and was badly holed by a projecting mass of ice unseen below the waterline. After six weeks, battling to stay afloat, they made it back to the Cape of Good Hope. Most of the supplies intended for Sydney Cove had been jettisoned in an attempt to lighten the ship. ‘Extract of a letter from an officer, Port Jackson, New South Wales, 14th April, 1790’, in The Oracle, 25 April 1791. Johnson to Fricker, 9 April 1790. ML SAFE 1/121. White to Skill, 17 April 1790, in Gentlemen’s Magazine, 1 January 1791. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 36.09. Watling (1794), Letters from an exile …, 20 May 1793, p. 10. Grose to unnamed

correspondent, 2 April 1792. MLMSS 6825. 38 Worgan (1788), Journal on a voyage to New South Wales …, a1175017.

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Phillip to Banks, 15 October 1792. NLA MS 9, Item 134. Banks to Sir Thomas Gery Cullum, 15 November 1789, quoted in N. Chambers (2007), The scientific correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765–1820, vol. 3, London: Pickering & Chatto, p. 517. White to Lambert, 11 March 1797, f. 204. BL Add 28545. Don, David (1824), ‘An account of the Lambertian herbarium’, in A. B. Lambert, Genus Pinus, vol. II, London: John Gale and R. Jennings. Originally numbering 13 drawings, number six is missing from the Ross Set; another drawing, more complex in composition and more complete, in a collection in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, includes the same pencil annotation — ‘Major Ross’ — and might have originally been part of this set. The Ross drawings in the Linnean Society are part of a larger group of 27 drawings possibly sent to Smith by Lambert; at least one drawing is annotated ‘ABL Esqr.’. Lambert to Smith, 17 June 1801. Smith Papers, vol. 6. Linn. Soc. Paterson to Banks, 8 October 1800. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 27.20. Note, Paterson and Lewin, undated, f. 164. BL Add 28545. Paterson to Banks, 11 December 1790. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 27.02. Paterson to Banks, 1 May 1792. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 27.03. Paterson to Banks, 12 December 1794. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 27.08. Paterson to Banks, 26 October 1795. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 27.11. Banks to Paterson, 31 March 1797. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 27.12. Andrews (1821), The botanist’s repository, vol. 1, opp. Pl. XXII. Lambert to Smith, 2 April 1808. Smith Papers, vol. 6. Linn. Soc.;

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Bowes Smyth, Arthur (1787–89), A journal of a voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China in the Lady Penrhyn, Merchantman William Cropton Sever, Commander by Arthur Bowes-Smyth, Surgeon – 1787–1788–1789, 21 January 1788, a1085084. Bowes Smyth (1787–89), A journal …, 23 December 1787, a1085071. Clark, Ralph (1787–92), Journal kept on the Friendship during a voyage to Botany Bay and Norfolk Island; and on the Gorgon returning to England …, 27 January 1788. ML SAFE 1/27a. White, John (1790), Journal of a voyage to New South Wales …, 18 November 1788. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 35.05. Worgan, George (1788), Journal on a voyage to New South Wales with the First Fleet, 12 June 1788, a1175007. Elizabeth Macarthur to Bridget Kingdon, 7 March 1791. ML A2906 (SAFE 1/398); Kingdon to Macarthur, 26 July 1800. ML A2900 (SAFE 1/396). Hunter, John (1787–91), Journal kept on board the Sirius during a voyage to New South Wales, January 1788, p. 61. SAFE / DLMS, a1518033. Many other references: Johnson to Fricker, 10 February 1788; Fowell to his father, 11 February 1788. Collins, David (1804), ‘Preface’, written 1798, in An account of the English colony in New South Wales, from its first settlement in January 1788, 2nd ed., London, p. ix; New South Wales referred to the eastern half of the Australian continent, New Holland to the western half. Tasmania was known as Diemens Land. Port Jackson and Botany Bay, both named by Cook in 1770, were used interchangeably, with Sydney Cove, to refer to the settlement at Sydney. Sydney was the name chosen by Phillip,

for Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney, Home Secretary. Anonymous female convict in ‘The following letter from Port Jackson, dated Nov., 14, 1788’, published in the London Chronicle, 28 May 1789. Bradley, William (1786–92), A voyage to New South Wales, 24 January 1788, p. 63. ML SAFE 1/14, a138064. Bowes Smyth (1787–89), A journal …, 20 August 1787, a1085046; Elizabeth Macarthur to Kingdon, 7 March 1791. ML A2900 (SAFE 1/396). Collins (1804), An account of the English colony …, p. 493. Bowes Smyth (1787–89), A journal …, 11 February 1788, a1085100. Phillip, Arthur (1789), The voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay: With an account of the establishment of the colonies of Port Jackson & Norfolk Island compiled from authentic papers …, London: Printed for John Stockdale, p. 272. Bradley (1786–92), A voyage to New South Wales, October 1788, p. 138. ML SAFE 1/14, a138138. Fowell to his father, 12 July 1788. MLMSS 4895/1/18. Tench, Watkin (1793), A complete account of the settlement at Port Jackson, London: Sold by G. Nicol and J. Sewell, p. 164; Tench, Watkin (1789) A narrative of the expedition to Botany Bay, London: Debretts, p. 122; Fowell to his father, 12 July 1788. MLMSS 4895, a616020. Clark (1787–92), Journal kept on the Friendship …, February 1788. ML SAFE 1/27 1, a262121. Bowes Smyth (1787–89), A journal …, 11 February 1788; Worgan to his brother George, 14 May 1788, pp. 28–9. ML SAFE 1/114, a1175031; Worgan (1788), Journal on a voyage to New South Wales …, p. 13, a1175016; Chapman to his sister, 18 October 1791. ML A 1974. Ross to Nepean, 14 November 1788, in Historical Records of New South Wales, 1892, vol. I, pt 2, Phillip: 1783–1792, Sydney, pp. 212–213. Ross to Nepean, 14 November 1788. Campbell to Ducie, 12 July 1788. MLMSS 5366 (SAFE 1/123). Phillip (1798), The voyage of

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the reference to an artist named Jones was first noted by Richard Neville in 1993. Lambert to Smith, 2 April 1808. Smith Papers, vol. 6. Linn. Soc. Grose to unnamed correspondent, 2 April 1792. MLMSS 6825. Johnson (1793), Moore Papers Foreign, 8 May 1793, vol. 1, p. 13. Collins, David (1798), An account of the English colony in New South Wales: With remarks on the dispositions, customs, manners, &c. of the native inhabitants of that country. To which are added, some particulars of New Zealand…, London: Printed for T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, p. 405. Lambert to Smith, 5 October 1802. Smith Papers, vol. 6. Linn. Soc. Lambert to Smith, 5 October 1802. Smith Papers, vol. 6. Linn. Soc. Edward Spain reminiscences, 1774–1802, pp. 67–8. ML SAFE/C 266. Phillip to Banks, 17 November 1788. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 37.09. Phillip (1789), The voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay …, p. 144; Phillip to Banks, 13 April 1790. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 37.11. Phillip to Banks, 3 December 1791. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 37.20. Charles Smith to Banks, 14 August 1804. Banks Papers ML/ DL Series 23.39. Phillip to Banks, 2 April 1792. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 37.23; Worgan (1788), Journal on a voyage to New South Wales …, a1175010. Phillips, H. (1815), A catalogue of a pleasing and valuable collection … also, a select collection of original drawings, of fish, birds, plants, flowers, fruits, and portraits of the natives, of New South Wales … [19 July 1815], London: Phillips. MLMSS 6276. Lambert to Smith, 29 November 1802. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. Gray, Jane Loring (ed.) (1893), Letters of Asa Gray, vol. 1, Boston/New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, pp. 124, 134; Lambert to Smith, 29

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January 1810. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. La Pérouse’s ships were last recorded leaving Botany Bay in February 1788. The mystery of their disappearance remained unsolved for nearly 40 years when the story of their shipwreck was finally pieced together on Vanikoro Island, part of the Solomon Islands group. When d’Entrecasteaux sailed past Vanikoro in 1793 without attempting to land, it is possible that he not only missed finding evidence of La Pérouse’s ships, but also the last survivors of the shipwreck. de Labillardière, Jacques (1800), Voyage in search of La Pérouse performed by order of the Constituent Assembly ..., London: Printed for John Stockdale, p. 258. Lambert to Smith, 15 March 1808; 21 March 1808. Smith Papers, vol. 6. Linn. Soc. King, P. G. & Brown, R., quoted in R. Else-Mitchell (1939), ‘George Caley: His life and work’, in Journal and Proceedings (Royal Australian Historical Society), vol. 25, pt 6, p. 459; Paterson to Banks, 1 November 1806. NLA MS 9 Item 119. Palmer to Joyce, 15 December 1794, published in The Morning Chronicle, 27 July 1795; Historical Records of New South Wales, 1892, vol. I, pt 2, Phillip: 1783–1792, Sydney, p. 870; Palmer and fellow convict W. Skirving (1797?) wrote A narrative of the sufferings of T.F. Palmer and W. Skirving during a voyage to New South Wales, 1794, on board the Surprise transport … London: Printed for James Machell and Son.

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Lambert’s copies of botanical drawings from White’s Watling Collection have been bound into Volume 5 of his Australian drawings, now part of the Mitchell Library’s Derby Collection, ML PXD 1098, vol. 5. Clark (1787–92), Journal kept on the Friendship …, 13 June 1790. ML SAFE 1/27 1, a262177. Hunter was exonerated and honourably acquitted for the loss of the Sirius in the court martial

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that took place in England in 1792. Salvin, Osbert (1877), in Proceedings of the scientific meetings of the Zoological Society of London for the year 1877, London: Printed for the Society, pp. 95–96. Raper, will, 14 October 1795, in George Raper – Papers, 1787–1824, Canberra: Australian Joint Copying Project, M1183. Raper’s will specified that, except his charts, all his papers of consequence were to be delivered, with his painting case, to his beloved mother. In 1962, the Raper Collection was presented to the Natural History Museum by Godman’s daughter, Eva. Groom, Linda (2009), First Fleet artist: George Raper’s birds & plants of Australia, Canberra: National Library of Australia, p. 59. Derby library register of books in the Ducie library, by bookcase and shelf number, cites a collection of ‘Drawings of plants from Botany Bay’ received into the Ducie library, date unknown; no artist or source for the drawings listed. Presumed to record the Ducie collection of New South Wales drawings, now in the National Library of Australia, attributed to Raper; it might refer to the series of 33 small botanical drawings only. D340a/Z5 Gloucestershire Archives, and Sarah Aitken, Gloucestershire Archives, email correspondence, 3 March 2013. Richard Neville and Jane Lennon have suggested that at least some of these drawings may have been executed in India, from skins collected in Australia, as stylistically they closely resemble works produced by artists working in that country: see Neville, Richard (1997), A rage for curiosity, State Library of New South Wales, p. 28 and Lennon, Jane (1995), ‘Art and science: Early Australian natural history drawings and engravings’, in Australiana, August, pp. 72–7; Christie’s, Fine paintings sale, Melbourne, 6 December 1994, Lots 62–72; a complete set of transparencies of these drawings is in the Mitchell Library: FM1/3419–3435. From a Canadian collection, it has not

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proved possible to trace their provenance beyond the Christie’s vendor. White (1790), Journal of a voyage to New South Wales …, p. 107; Hunter was copying the work of other artists but the idea that he was copying from his junior officer, George Raper, should now be tested. It is not clear when Anderson’s copies were made or by whom. Hunter’s album dates between 1788 and 1792, though he probably had it with him in Sydney in 1800 when Lewin arrived in January of that year. Some drawing titles in Anderson are common to Hunter and include Indigenous words. Smith, Bernard (1992), Imagining the Pacific: In the wake of the Cook voyages, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Also sold as schlag leaf or imitation gold, Dutch metal is an alloy of copper and zinc and was commonly used as a cheaper substitute for gold leaf. Anon. (1778), The art of drawing and painting in water-colours …, Dublin: Printed by J. Potts, pp. 60–1; ox gall is mixed with watercolours to improve the flow and adherence of paint on hard surfaces. Public Advertiser (1782), London, 13 September; Issue 15069 includes reports of the theft of ‘some Books of Gold Leaf and Dutch Metal’. Gray G. R. (1843), ‘XXXII. – Some rectification of the nomenclature of Australian birds’, in The Annals and Magazine of Natural History: Zoology, Botany, and Geology, vol. XI, London: R. and J.E. Taylor, p. 189. Strickland, H. E. (1843), ‘Remarks on a collection of Australian drawings of birds, the property of the Earl of Derby’, in Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. 11, pp. 333–8 at p. 333. Types are the original specimen on which the first description of a species is based; Hindwood, K. A. (1970), ‘The “Watling” drawings with incidental notes on the “Lambert” and the “Latham” drawings’, in Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales 1968–1969, p. 20; Mathews, G. M. (1942), ‘The

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Lambert Drawings’, in Emu, vol. 42, pp. 123–4 at p. 123.

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(1967), The art of botanical illustration, London: Collins, p. 210. In 1996, a volume of original drawings by Andrews was found at Woburn Abbey: see Cleveley (2009). If Andrews did work for Lambert, it is possible that drawings copied in his hand might be found among the drawings in the Mitchell Library’s Derby Collection. Curtis, S. (1828), ‘Memoirs of the life and writings of the late William Curtis’, General indexes to the plants contained in the first fifty-three volumes (or Old Series Complete) of the Botanical Magazine, to which are added a few interesting memoirs of the author, Mr. W. Curtis, London: Printed by Edward Couchman, p. xi; Edwards (1821), Botanical Register, vol. 7, Pl. 528. Lambert to Smith, 10 September 1804. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc.; Lambert to Pulteney, 16 November 1799. MS 238b Linn. Soc. Andrews (1807), The botanist’s repository, vol. 8, Plate 531. Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Reporter, 28 November 1818; listed as settler, Historical Records of Australia, series 3, vol. 1, p. 108.

6 Nat u ra l c u r i os i ti e s 1 2

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White (1790), Journal of a voyage to New South Wales …, p. 116. Nagle, Jacob (1775–1802), memoir titled ‘Jacob Nagle his book …’, compiled 1829, pp. 83–84, ML SAFE 1/114 a366083– 4; Colley, Sarah and Attenbrow, Val (2012), ‘Does technology make a difference? Aboriginal and colonial fishing in Port Jackson, New South Wales’, in Archaeology in Oceania, vol. 47, p. 69; Tench (1793), A complete account of the settlement at Port Jackson, in New South Wales …, p. 176. Phillip (1798), The voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay …, p. 236. Worgan (1788), Journal on a voyage to New South Wales …, ML SAFE1/14 a1175008; Hunter, John (1787–91), Journal kept on board the Sirius …, May 1788

pp. 108–9, SAFE / DLMS 164, a1518057; Phillip to Banks, 16 November 1788. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 37.08. 5 Worgan (1788), Journal on a voyage to New South Wales …, ML SAFE1/14 a1175008, a1175031; Gammage, Bill (2012), The biggest estate on earth: How Aborigines made Australia, Sydney: Allen & Unwin. 6 Iron gall ink is the most commonly used ink in eighteenth-century documents. Its principal ingredient is crushed galls formed on trees by insects to lay their larvae. The ink is identified by its colour: when fresh, iron gall ink appears blueblack but always turns brown over time. 7 Bower, Peter (1999), ‘The white art: The importance of interpretation in the analysis of paper’, in John Slavin et al. (eds), Looking at paper: Evidence and interpretation, Symposium Proceedings, Toronto, p. 11; watermark research and analysis at the State Library of New South Wales was undertaken by Kate Hughes, Garling Conservator; see also Hughes, Kate (2013), ‘Garling Conservator Project: Documenting the TAL & Dai-ichi Life Derby Collection of natural history watercolours’, presented at AICCM National Conference Adelaide, 23–25 October 2013. 8 Neville (1997), A rage for curiosity, p. 28. Richard Neville has suggested that stylistically the Sydney Bird Painter’s drawings might have been produced in India. Identical watermarks, shared with known colonial drawings produced in New South Wales, challenge this idea. 9 Public Record Office, H.O. 102/52, quoted in Gladstone, Hugh S. (1938), Thomas Watling Limner of Dumfries, private circulation reprinted from the Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, p. 19. 10 Watling (1794), Letters from an exile at Botany-Bay …, p. 4. 11 Gladstone (1938), Thomas Watling Limner of Dumfries …, p. 22; Watling (1794), Letters from an exile at Botany-Bay …, p. 28. 12 Watling (1794), Letters from an

n ot e s to pa g e s 1 2 6 – 1 74

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Collins, David (1802), An account of the English colony in New South Wales from its first settlement, in January 1788, to August 1801 …, vol. 2, pp. 208–9. Phillip to Banks, 26 July 1790, Banks Papers ML/DL Series 37.01. Now known as the Sydney Cove Medallion, eleven are known to have survived; six of these are held in the Mitchell Library collection at the State Library of New South Wales. Smith, J. E. (1793), A specimen of the botany of New Holland, vol. 1, London: J. Sowerby, p. vii. Vaux, James Hardy (1819), Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux …, vol. 1, London: W. Clowes, p. 205. Collins (1804), An account of the English colony …, 2nd ed., p. 332. Banks, ‘Rules for collecting and preserving specimens of plants’. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 21.06. Banks, ‘Instructions for the collector of objects of natural history’. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 88.07. Paterson to Banks, 7 January 1805. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 27.32; Collins (1798), An account of the English colony in New South Wales …, p. 405. Charles Smith to Banks, 14 August 1804. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 23.39. Chaplin, J. E. (2003), ‘Nature and nation: Natural history in context’, in Sue Ann Prince, Stuffing birds, pressing plants, shaping knowledge. Natural history in North America, 1730– 1860, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, vol. 93, pt 4, pp. 76, 84. Swainson, William (1840), Taxidermy: Bibliography and biography, London: Printed for Longman, Orme, Brown, Green & Longmans, pp. 65–6. Forbes, in Prince (2003), Stuffing birds, pressing plants, shaping knowledge, vol. 93, pt 4, p. viii. Elizabeth Macarthur to Bridget Kingdon, 7 March 1791. ML A2906 (SAFE 1/398). Smith, Bernard (1992), Imagining

the Pacific, p. 3. 15 Lambert to Smith, 17 June 1801. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. 16 Latham to Lambert, 26 January 1800. ML PXD 1098, vol. 1. 17 Smith, Bernard (1992), Imagining the Pacific, p. 3. 18 Phillip to Banks, Banks Papers ML/DL Series 37.04; Series 37.05. 19 Bowes Smyth’s journals are in NLA, ML SLNSW and BL; King’s journals, and one version of Nagle’s memoirs are in ML SLNSW; another version of Nagle is in William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan. 20 Lambert to Smith, 24 September 1802. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. 21 Lycett’s drawings are now in the Dixson Galleries Collection, State Library of New South Wales (DGD 1); see also Neville, R. (2006), ‘The Derby Album’, in J. McPhee (ed.), Joseph Lycett convict artist, Sydney: Historic Houses Trust, pp. 138–9. 22 Edwards, Sydenham (1821), The Botanical Register, vol. 7, Pl. 528; The Botanical Register was a botanical magazine begun in 1815 by Sydenham Edwards; it ran until 1847. 23 Edwards (1821), The Botanical Register, vol. 7, Pl. 532. 24 Lambert to Sims, 23 July 1828. Kew Archives. 25 Lambert to Hooker, 20 July 1840. Directors’ correspondence, vol. 15. Kew Archives. 26 Lambert to Smith, September 1810. Smith Papers, vol. 6 Linn. Soc. 27 Andrews (1797), The botanist’s repository, vol. 3, opp. Pl. CCLXXX. 28 Cleveley, J. (2009), ‘Some notes and comments on the illustrations of Henry Charles Andrews’, in Archives of Natural History, vol. 36, p. 165; Andrews, H. C. (1802–09), Coloured engravings of heaths: The drawings taken from living plants only. With the ... character, full description, native place of growth, and time of flowering of each, London: Published by the author. Few original drawings by Andrews have been identified; one from 1796, used in The botanist’s repository, vol. 1, is held in the Natural History Museum: see Blunt, Wilfrid & Stearn, Thomas

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exile at Botany-Bay …, p. 20. 13 Watling (1794), Letters from an exile at Botany-Bay …, p. 20. 14 Watling (1794), Letters from an exile at Botany-Bay …, pp. 8–9. 15 Telemachus, in Greek mythology, the son of Odysseus and Penelope; in James Thomson’s popular 1727 poem ‘The Seasons’, Musidora, as summer, bathes in a stream in the forest, secretly watched by her admirer, Damon. Watling (1794), Letters from an exile at Botany-Bay …, p. 9. 16 Watling (1794), Letters from an exile at Botany-Bay …, p. 22. 17 Gladstone (1938), Thomas Watling Limner of Dumfries …, p. 22. 18 Watling (1794), Letters from an exile at Botany-Bay …, p. 15. 19 Watling (1794), Letters from an exile at Botany-Bay …, p. 10. 20 Smyth, J. F. D. (1784), A tour in the United States of America containing an account of the present situation of that country, the population, agriculture, commerce, customs, and manners of the inhabitants ..., vol. 1, London: Printed for G. Robinson, pp. 35–9. 21 Smyth (1784), A tour in the United States of America …, pp. 37–8. 22 Watling (1794), Letters from an exile at Botany-Bay …, pp. 15–16. 23 One of the subscribers to Smyth’s book was a man called Thomas White; whether he was related to John White, and lent him his book, is not known. 24 Watling (1794), Letters from an exile at Botany-Bay …, p. 9; Gray, T. (1976), Elegy written in a country churchyard. The Eton Manuscript & the First Edition, 1751. Reproduced in facsimile with an introduction by Alastair Macdonald, Ilkley, UK: Scolar Press. 25 Edward Spain reminiscences …, 1774–1802, p. 57. ML C226.

7 T he b ota ni cal al b um s 1

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Smith, James Edward (1793), A specimen of the botany of New Holland vol. 1, London: Printed by J. Davis, published by J. Sowerby, pp. 45–6. Phillip to Banks, 13 April 1790. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 37.11. Tench (1793), A complete account of the settlement at

4 5

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Port Jackson …, p. 10. Phillip to Banks, 3 December 1791. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 37.20. Subscribers were often supporters or friends of an author who helped secure funding for a publication by promising to buy a book and paying part of the purchase price in advance. The remainder was paid after the book had been printed and delivered. The names of subscribers were listed in the front of the book. Anon. (1790s), ‘Vocabulary of the language of N. S. Wales, in the neighbourhood of Sydney (Native and English, but not alphabetical)’. Though included with the notebooks of William Dawes, Notebook C has been written in a clerical hand that appears frequently among Phillip’s letters, and includes notes and annotations in Phillip’s hand. Notebook C, SOAS. Dawes, William (c. 1790s), Flora of Norfolk Island, attributed to John Doody. ML SAFE/DL PXX 1 f. 39. Paterson to Banks, 23 May 1793. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 27.05. Meynell, Guy (1983), ‘Francis Bauer, Joseph Banks, Everard Home and others’, in Archives of Natural History, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 209–21. Smith, James Edward (1806), in ‘Preface’, Flora Gaeca Sibthorpiana, vol. 1, London: Richard Taylor, p. iv, retrieved from . Smith, James Edward (1793), A specimen of the botany of New Holland, p. 46. Australian flowers (1787–99), attributed to George Raper. ML SAFE/PXD 17. Bayly to Banks, 8 August 1786. Kew, KBP vol. 1, f. 237. Smith (1793), A specimen of the botany of New Holland …, pp. 9–10. Smith (1793), A specimen of the botany of New Holland …, p. viii. Neville, Richard (1997), ‘Why early colonial art is not what it seems’, in Australiana, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 104–105; Curtis, S. (1828), ‘Memoirs of the life and writings of the late William Curtis’, p. xii. Pulteney to Lambert, 8 February

1799. BL MSS Add 28454. 18 White (1790), Journal of a voyage to New South Wales …, p. 280; Tench (1793), A complete account of the settlement at Port Jackson …, p. 10.

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Asa Gray in Gray (1893), Letters of Asa Gray, vol., 1, pp. 110–11. Lambert to Sims, 23 July 1828[?] in Sims, John: original letters to, chiefly concerning the Botanical Magazine, 1774–1828, f. 86 Kew Archives. Miller (1970), ‘The herbarium of Aylmer Bourke Lambert’, p. 457; Gray (1893), Letters of Asa Gray, pp. 21, 111. Gray (1893), Letters of Asa Gray, p. 111. Gray (1893), Letters of Asa Gray, p. 134. Roe to his brother William, 18 April 1828. Privately held. Lambert to Smith, 26 August 1836; Lambert to Webb, 9 May 1837 BL Ms Eg 2852 f. 33; Lambert to Hooker, 25 April 1840. Directors’ Correspondence, Vol. 5: English letters, H–L, 1832–35. Kew Archives. Lewin Land, near King Georges Sound in south Western Australia had been named for the Dutch ship Leeuwin in 1622 rather than for the artist, John Lewin. Webb to Lambert, 1836, f. 199. Kew Archives. Lambert to Webb, 9 May 1837. BL Ms Eg 2852 f. 33. Lambert to Smith, 21 March 1808. Smith Papers, vol. 6. Linn. Soc. Lambert to Smith, February 1840, ff. 240–241. Kew Archives. Lambert to Hooker, 28 February 1840. Kew Archives. Miller (1970), ‘The Herbarium of Aylmer Bourke Lambert’, p. 497; Hooker, undated note. Kew Directors’ Correspondence vol. 5: English letters, H–L, 1832–1835. Kew Archives. Miller (1970), ‘The Herbarium of Aylmer Bourke Lambert’, p. 506. Miller (1970), ‘The Herbarium of Aylmer Bourke Lambert’, p. 505. ‘Donations to the Museum of the Linnean Society’ (1810), in Transactions of the Linnean Society, vol. 10, London: Printed for the Society, p. 413. The Times (London, England), 2 November 1841, Issue 17817, p. 3. Latham to Pennant, 12 October

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1799 quoted in E. Charles Nelson (1998), ‘John White A.M., M.D., F.L.S., (c.1756–1832), SurgeonGeneral of New South Wales: A new biography of the messenger of the echidna and waratah’, in Archives of Natural History, vol. 25, no. 2, p. 184. Original letter in National Library of Wales. Transactions of the Linnean Society, vol. 8, 1807, pp. 318–20. Sawyer, F. C. (1949), ‘Notes on some original drawings of birds used by Dr. John Latham’, in The Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, vol. 2, pt 5, p. 176. Latham, John (1821), General history of birds, Winchester, UK: Printed by Jacob and Johnson, for the author, sold in London by G. and W. B. Whittaker, vol. 1, p. 222; Watling Drawing no. 103. NHM, London. Latham (1822), General history of birds …, vol. 2, pp. 52–54; Watling Drawing no. 116. NHM, London. Latham to Lambert, 10 August 1804. f. 155. BL Mss Add 28545. Francillon to John Leigh Phillips, 10 August 1793. BL Mss Add 29533. King, Thomas (1817), A catalogue of the miscellaneous effects, of the Late J. Francillon, Esq. of No. 2, Norfolk Street, Strand, London: Messrs. King. A small side table made of casuarina from timber sent by White to Hamond was sold by Hamond descendants at Bonhams, Lot 1063, in September 2006, and acquired by the National Museum of Australia. Collins (1798), An account of the English colony in New South Wales …, p. vii. ‘Extract of a letter from an officer, Port Jackson, New South Wales, 14th April, 1790’, in The Oracle, 25 April 1791. Phillip to Banks, 2 July 1788. Banks Papers ML/DL Series 37.04; Collins (1802), An account of the English colony in New South Wales ..., vol. 2, p. 475. David Collins, general and garrison orders, 1803–08. ML A341 a1492080.

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5366; SAFE 1/123) Fowell family, Letters received mainly from Newton Fowell, 1786–90 (SAFE/MLMSS 4895) Grose, F., Letter to unknown correspondent, 2 April 1792 (fair copy) (SAFE/MLMSS 6825) Letters, from Rev. Richard Johnson to Henry Fricker, 1787–97 (ML SAFE 1/121) Macarthur, E., Journal and correspondence, 1789–1840 (ML A 2906; SAFE 1/398) Nagle, J., memoir, Jacob Nagle his book … County Ohio, 1775–1802, compiled 1829 (MLMSS 5954; SAFE 1/156) Phillip, A., Letter to Lansdowne, 3 July 1788 (MLMSS 7241; SAFE 1/234) Raper, G., will, 14 October 1795 (AJCP M1183) Spain, E., Reminiscences, 1774–1802 (ML SAFE/C 266) Worgan, G. B., Journal fragment, 20 January – 11 July 1788, with letter to Richard Worgan, 12–18 June 1788 (ML SAFE 1/114)

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Sibthorpiana, vol. 1, London: Richard Taylor. Retrieved from . Smyth, J. F. D. (1784), A tour in the United States of America containing an account of the present situation of that country, the population, agriculture, commerce, customs, and manners of the inhabitants ..., vol. 1, London: Printed for G. Robinson. Sotheby, S. L. (1842), Catalogue of the valuable botanical library of the late A. B. Lambert, F.R.S., F.S.A., &c, of Boyton House, Wiltshire, Esq. ..., London: S. Leigh Sotheby. Strickland, H. E. (1843), ‘Remarks on a collection of Australian drawings of birds, the property of the Earl of Derby’, in Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. 11, pp. 333–338. Swainson, W. (1840), Taxidermy: Bibliography and biography, London: Printed for Longman, Orme, Brown, Green & Longmans. Tench, W. (1789), A narrative of the expedition to Botany-bay: With an account of New South Wales …, London: Debretts. Tench, W. (1793), A complete account of the settlement at Port Jackson, in New South Wales, …, London: Sold by G. Nicol and J. Sewell. Watling, T. (1794), Letters from an exile at Botany-Bay to his aunt in Dumfries: Giving a particular account of the settlement of New South Wales, with the customs and manners of the inhabitants, Penrith, UK: Ann Bell. White, J. (1790), Journal of a voyage to New South Wales with sixty-five plates of non descript animals, birds, ... and other natural productions, London: Printed for J. Debrett.

sources

Ferdinand Bauer, Norfolk Island Pine (Dombeya excelsa), 1803, engraving From Aylmer Bourke Lambert, Description of the genus Pinus …, 1824, Pl. 40

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ac k n ow led g m en t s

n at u r a l c u r i o s i t y

The acquisition in 2011 of Lambert’s Derby Collection for the State Library of New South Wales would not have been possible without the support of the New South Wales Government, and the incredibly generous corporate philanthropy of TAL & Dai-ichi Life, whose gift was one of the largest ever received by the Library. Known formally as the TAL & Dai-ichi Life Derby Collection, the collection simply could not have been acquired for the people of New South Wales without their help. The great generosity and foresight of Peter and Sally Crossing, through their Belalberi Foundation, have made this book possible. Richard Neville has been unfailingly enthusiastic and supportive of this research. He, along with Warwick Hirst, Lisa Loader and Shirley Walker were generous first readers of the manuscript. Their friendship, boundless support and contribution to the many discussions about the book were an indispensable part of the process. Kate Hughes, the State Library’s Garling Conservator whose research on the Derby Collection has been supported by the State Library Foundation’s Garling Bequest, has been a considered and generous colleague, and a valuable second pair of eyes. It has been a pleasure sharing and discovering these collections with her. I thank, too, Alex Bryne and Noelle Nelson for their support of this project. Kevin Leamon, Jane Whisker, Bruce York and Hamilton Churton of the Library’s Imaging Services have overseen the photography, and coordinated the many images that were supplied. The staff of many institutions have been invariably helpful and obliging: the Archives at Kew Gardens, the Natural History Museum especially Judith Magee, and the Linnean Society, all in London; the Alexander Turnbull Library, in Wellington, New Zealand; and the National Library of Australia, Canberra especially Margy Burn and Robyn Holmes. Linda Groom, formerly of the National Library, was generous in sharing information, thoughts and views. Clem Fisher of National Museums Liverpool was warm, generous and informative. I especially thank Lisa Di Tommaso of the Natural History Museum and Nicola Mackay-Sim of the National Library of Australia for their support and enthusiasm for this project, their generous and immediate responses to my many requests for assistance, and their friendship. The staff of NewSouth Publishing have been a great pleasure to work with. And the enormous support and love of my family, Robert and Antonia Keessen, most of all.  

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index

In this index, page numbers in bold italic type denote illustrations. Page numbers followed by ‘c’ indicate captions that do not appear on the same page as the illustration they refer to. For drawings with identical titles and by unknown artists, the date of the drawing is given.

Blagden, Dr Charles, 53, 55 Blandford, Lord (George SpencerChurchill), 30–1, 146, 147, 224 Blue-bellied Parrot (Trichoglossus haemotodus), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 64c, 65 Botanical Register, 147 The Botanist’s Repository, 70, 146–7 Botany of New Holland (Smith), 53 Bottle brush (Callistemon citrinus), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 64 Bottlebrush (Callistemon sp.), Thomas Watling, watercolour, 34, 35c Bowes Smith, Arthur, 38, 43, 44, 139 A View of the Tree at Botany Bay wh yields ye Yellow Balsam, & of a Wigwam, watercolour, 36–7 Bradley, William, 43, 52 Entrance of Port Jackson 27 January 1788, watercolour, 39 North Arm of Broken Bay New South Wales from an Island at the entrance Sepr 1789, watercolour, 50 A View in upper part of Port Jackson; when the Fish was shot, watercolour, 50c, 51 Brewer, Henry, 43 Britania, artist unknown, watercolour, 222–3 British Museum, 11, 15 Brolga or New Holland Crane (Grus rubicuda), artist unknown, watercolour, 41 Brown, Robert, 80, 224 Brown Gum Tree, Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 195, 199 Brown Marsupial-mouse (Antechinus stuartii), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 238 Brush bronze wing pigeon (Phaps elegans). Natural size, Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, 118 Brush bronzewing (Phaps elegans), artist unknown, watercolour with Dutch metallic leaf, 119 (Buchardia umbellata) orchid, William Paterson, watercolour, 202c, 203 Buffalo (ship), 126, 127 Burton, David, 234

Butler, Daniel, 47 Caley, George, 82 Campbell, James, 48–9 Candolle, Augustin de, 31, 230 Caprimulgus vittatus, artist unknown, watercolour, 97 Captain Arthur Phillip, 1787, Francis Wheatley, oil, 50 cargoes of exotica, 62, 127, 129–30, 133 Certhia tenuistris, artist unknown, c.1797, watercolour, 101 Certhia tenuistris…Slender-billed Creeper, artist unknown, c.1799, watercolour, 101 Chapman, William Neate, 47 Charlotte, Queen, 127 Chlamysporum, Common fringed lily (Thysanotus tuberosus), artist unknown, watercolour, 28c, 29 Christmas bell (Blandfordia nobilis), artist unknown, watercolour, 30, 31c Christmas bush, 214 Christmas bush (Ceratopetalum gummiferum), artist unknown, watercolour, [Dixon Galleries collection], 210 Christmas bush (Ceratopetalum gummiferum), artist unknown, watercolour, [Watling Collection], 211 Christmas bush (Ceratopetalum gummiferum), James Sowerby, hand coloured engraving, 212, 213c Ciliary Warbler Male or Grey-backed silvereye (Zosterops lateralis), Thomas Watling, watercolour, 178c, 179 Clark, Ralph, 38–9, 46, 86 collections of drawings see also Derby Collection; Ducie Collection; Lambert Drawings; Latham Collection; Raper Collection; Seton Collection; Turnbull Collection; Watling Collection attribution and authorship issues, 89, 91–2, 94, 96, 105, 112–14, 135, 162, 166, 181, 220–1, 239 provenance issues, 91–2, 120, 135, 230, 232–4, 236, 239–40 Collins, David, 42, 52, 75, 129, 240

index

Aboriginal art, 52, 80 Aboriginal people, 38, 41, 132, 161–2, 209 artistic depictions of, 74, 76, 158–9, 162 Acacia, possibly hispidula; Narrow-leaf drumsticks (Isopogon anethifolius), Thomas Watling, watercolour, 197 Alexander Turnbull Library see Turnbull Collection Anas australis, artist unknown, watercolour with gold leaf, 121 Anas jubilata…Hawksbury Duck, artist unknown, watercolour, 121 Anderson Seton, Robert, 92, 113 ‘Gode-gang’, watercolour, 116 Andrews, Henry Charles, 23, 70, 146–7 Lambertia Formosa, hand coloured engraving, 20 Annesley, George, 30 Antherium (Buchardia umbellata), artist unknown, watercolour, 68–9 attribution and authorship issues copied drawings, 89, 91–2, 94, 96, 105, 113–14, 135, 162, 166, 181, 241 orchid drawings, 197, 200–1, 205, 206, 209 Audubon, John James, 13 Australasian Shoveler or Hawksbury duck (Anas rhynchotis), female, artist unknown, watercolour, 42 Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus), artist unknown, watercolour, 139 Axtelma eximium, after Ferdinand Bauer, hand coloured engraving, 149 Aylmer Bourke Lambert, William Evans, stipple engraving, 23 Azure Kingfisher (Alcedo azurea), artist unknown, watercolour, 226

Banded Goatsucker, Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 97 Banks, Sir Joseph, 30, 44, 55, 68–70, 127, 129, 135, 139, 161 Banksia, artist unknown, watercolour, 33 A banksia, Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 239 A Banksia called ‘the Honey tree of New South Wales’ (Banksia serrata or possibly aemula), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 138 Banksia spinalosa, Indigenous name ‘Wallangra’, Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 239 Barracouta, artist unknown, watercolour, 156 Barracouta (Leionura atu), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 156 Bauer, Ferdinand, 26, 80, 141, 200–1 Bauer, Ferdinand (after the style of) Axtelma eximium, hand coloured engraving, 149 Lambertia formosa, hand coloured engraving, 146, 147c Norfolk Island Pine (Dombeya excelsa), engraving, 249 Bauer, Franz, 26, 141, 200–1, 205, 209 Flying duck orchid (Caleana major), watercolour, 200 Golden donkey orchid (Diursis aurea) and Diursis possibly platichil, watercolour, 207 Bauera rubioides and Golden donkey orchid (Diursis aurea), possibly by William Dawes, watercolour, 206, 207c Bittern (Botaurus poiciloptilus), Thomas Watling, watercolour, 176, 177c Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), artist unknown, watercolour, vi The Black Swan the size of an English Swan Native name Mulgo (Cygnus atratus), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 124, 125c black swans, vi, 8, 47, 81, 124, 125c, 127, 240 Black-necked stork (Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus), artist unknown, watercolour, 47

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Colonel William Paterson, William Owen, oil, 68 Common bronzewing (Phaps chalcoptera) and Forest grass tree (Xanthorrhoea media), John Hunter, watercolour, 117 Common bronze wing (Phaps chalcoptera), Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour with gold leaf, 114; detail 112 Common bronze wing (Phaps chalcoptera) with small grass tree (Xanthorrhoea media), artist unknown, watercolour with Dutch metal leaf, 115 convict artists, 181 see also Doody, John; Watling, Thomas copying of documents, 139–40 copying of drawings accuracy issues, 131–2 art training and, 108 for circulating and sharing knowledge, 16, 137, 139, 140, 220–1 as common practice, 16, 86–7, 89, 135, 137, 139, 181, 239 issues of attribution and authorship, 89, 91–2, 94, 96, 105, 112–14, 135, 161, 162, 166, 167, 181, 220–1, 239 stylistic and artistic aspects, 94, 96, 105, 108, 110, 112–14, 116 copyists, 140–1, 146–7 Coracias orientalis, artist unknown, watercolour, 106 Cordyline Objecta, John Doody, watercolour, 66c, 67 Crimson rosella (Platycercus elegans), artist unknown, watercolour, 17 Cuculous plagosus…Glossy Cuckoo, artist unknown, watercolour, 110 Cuculous possibly Brush cuckoo (adult and juvenile), Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour with gold leaf, 109 Cuculus plagosus, artist unknown, watercolour, 110–11 Cumberland, Duchess of, 187 Cumberland Tree, artist unknown, c.1791, watercolour, 186, 187c Cumberland Tree, Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 189 Cumberland Tree (Clereodendrum possibly tomentosum), artist unknown, c.1797, watercolour, 184 Cumberland tree drawings, 185–7 dating of drawings, 167, 171–2 Dawes, William, 43, 209, 213–14 Bauera rubioides and Golden donkey orchid (Diursis aurea), watercolour [possibly by Dawes], 206, 207c Epacris longiflora and Flying duck orchid (Caleana major), watercolour [possibly by Dawes], 201

Purple donkey orchid (Diursis punctata or possibly alba) with Golden donkey orchid detail (Diursis aurea), watercolour [possibly by Dawes], 208, 209c Swamp Lily (Crinum pendunculatum), watercolour [possibly by Dawes], 202c, 203 de Clifford, Lady, 30 Derby, 13th Earl of (Lord Stanley, Edward Smith-Stanley), acquires Lambert’s drawings, 10–11, 120 as natural history collector, 11, 13, 15 portrait, 10 species named after, 13 Derby Collection importance, 15–16 naming, 89 provenance and overview, 8, 10–11, 15–19, 89 volumes 1-3 (see Lambert Drawings) volume 4 (zoological) 152–82 passim volumes 5-6 (botanical), 171, 195– 222 passim A Description of the Genus Pinus (Lambert), 26 dingoes, 46, 47, 220, 220 Diursis possibly platichil, Franz Bauer, 1793, watercolour, 207 Dodd, Robert Part of the Crew of His Majesty’s Ship Guardian endeavouring to escape in the Boats, aquatint, 56 Dollar bird, artist unknown, c.1800, watercolour [Mitchell Library], 107 Dollar bird (Eurystomus orientalis), artist unknown, 1790s, watercolour [Alexander Turnbull Library], 107 Dollarbird (Eurystomus orientalis), artist unknown, 1790s, watercolour, [Ducie Collection], 107 Dollarbird (Eurystomus orientalis), John Hunter, watercolour, 107 Dollar-Bird (Eurystomus orientalis), Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, 106 Don, David, 224–5 Doody, John, 69, 171, 187, 209 Cordyline Objecta, watercolour, 66c, 67 Flax plant of Norfolk Island (Phormium tenax), watercolour, 81 Freycinetia baueriana, watercolour, 73 Drosera (probably Drosera spatulata), artist unknown, watercolour, 70 (Drosera peltata), artist unknown, watercolour, 26c, 27 Ducie, Lord (Thomas Reynolds Moreton), 91 Ducie Collection, 91, 105, 113–14, 116, 220

Flying duck orchid (Caleana major), Franz Bauer, c.1793, watercolour, 200, 201c Flying duck orchid (Caleana major), possibly by William Dawes, watercolour, 201 Forster, George, 32 Eastern Curlew (Numenius madagascariensis), artist unknown, Fowell, Newton, 43, 44, 46 Francillon, John, 233–4, 236 watercolour, 140–1 Freycinetia baueriana, John Doody, Eastern native cat (Dasyurus watercolour, 73 viverrinus), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 238 General History of Birds (Latham), 232 Eastern native cat or quolls with a General Synopsis of Birds (Latham), dead chicken, artist unknown, 114, 120, 135, 232 watercolour, 19 Glossy Cuckoo, Port Jackson Painter, Eastern rosella, artist unknown, watercolour, 110c, 111 watercolour, 48c, 49 ‘Gode-gang’, possibly by Robert Eastern Spinebill (Acanathorhynchus Anderson Seton, watercolour, 116 tenuirostris), Sydney Bird Painter, Godman, Frederick Du Cane, 91 watercolour, 100 gold leaf and gold heightening, 112–14, Edridge, Henry, 23 116 Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Golden donkey orchid (Diursis aurea), Derby, formerly Lord Stanley, artist unknown, 1791?, watercolour, William Derby, oil on canvas, 10 206 Edwards, Sydenham Teast, 146, 147, 220 Golden donkey orchid (Diursis aurea), Elephant fish (Callorhynchus artist unknown, 1793?, incomplete Antarcticus), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 207 watercolour, 72–3 Golden donkey orchid (Diursis aurea) emus, 44, 47, 127 and Diursis possibly platichil, Franz England, Herbert, 120 Bauer, watercolour, 207 Ennis (copyist), 141 Gould, John, 13 Entrance of Port Jackson 27 January 1788, William Bradley, watercolour, Gray, Asa, 224 Gray, George Robert, 120 39 Grenville, William Wyndham, 30, 139, Epacris longiflora and Flying duck 225 orchid (Caleana major), watercolour Grose, Francis, 58–9, 71 [possibly by Dawes], 201 A Groupe on the North Shore of Port Essex, Lord and Lady, 30, 146, 227 Jackson New South Wales, Thomas Watling, watercolour, 162 First Fleet artists Guardian shipwreck, 56, 57 artistic responses to the colony, Gunning, George Weston, 226 44, 46, 49 Gymea lily drawings, 68–9 cultural activities, 43 first impressions of New South Wales, 38–41, 43–4, 46–8, 161–2, Hairpin Banksia (Banksia spinulosa), artist unknown, watercolour, 9 174, 177–8 Hamilton, Sir William, 30, 55 First Fleet colonists Handsome flat-pea (Platylobium feelings of insecurity, disquiet and formosum), artist unknown, dislocation, 42–3, 48–9, 51, 57–9 watercolour, 240c, 241 shipments of exotica to England, Hawksbury duck, Australasian shoveler 62, 127, 129–30, 133 (Anas rhyncotis), artists unknown, fish and fishing, 156–61 watercolours, 150–1, 152–3 Flannel flower (Actinotus helianthi), Hawksbury ducks, depictions, 42, 121, artist unknown, watercolour, 196 152–3 Flax plant of Norfolk Island (Phormium tenax), John Doody, watercolour, 81 Hayes, William, 91 Hibbert, George, 31 Flinders, Matthew, 80 Honey Tree of New South Wales, Flying duck orchid (Caleana Indigenous name ‘Wattang-ree’, major), artist unknown, 1791–92, Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, watercolour, 200, 201c 239 Flying duck orchid (Caleana major), artist unknown, 1790s, watercolour, Hook-billed shrike, Grey butcher bird (Cracticus torquatus), Indigenous 200, 201c name ‘Karro-bee-rang’, Port Flying duck orchid (Caleana major), possibly by William Dawes, c.1793, Jackson Painter, watercolour, 230c, watercolour, 201 231 Duck or Grebe, artist unknown, watercolour, 15 Dumont d’Urville, Jules, 226 d’Urville, Jules Dumont, 226 Dutch metal, 112, 114, 116

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Long flowered mistletoe (Dendrophite vitellina), artist unknown, watercolour, 32 Lord Howe Island Pigeon or Common (Forest) bronze wing pigeon (Phaps chalcoptera), artist unknown, watercolour and ink with metallic paint or leaf, 115 Love creeper (Comesperma volubile), artist unknown, watercolour, [Derby Collection], 221 Love creeper (Comesperma volubile), artist unknown, watercolour, [Ducie Collection], 221 Luttrell, Lady Elizabeth, 187 Lycett, Joseph The Lieutenant Governor’s Cottage at New Norfolk…Van Diemen’s Land, watercolour, 144–5 View of the Heads, and part of Botany Bay - from the End of Cooks River about 8 miles from Sydney - New South Wales…, watercolour, 142–3

Mr White, Harris and Laing with a party of soldiers visiting Botany Bay Colebee…, Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 74–5 Musk lorikeet (Glossopsitta concinna), artist unknown, watercolour, 57

Nagle, Jacob, 140, 156, 161 Native name Goo-ge-na-gan Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaguineae), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 78, 79c The native name is Burowang (Macrozamia, possibly Macrozamia communis), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 58 natural history drawings see also copying of drawings accuracy, 68, 131–2 backgrounds of distorted scale, 153, 161, 166 dating methods, 167, 171 as documentary records, 140 inclusion of Indigenous names, 113, 120, 132, 137 political aspects, 130, 133 Macarthur, Elizabeth, 40–1, 43 for transmitting knowledge, 132, 133 Macleay, Alexander, 25, 25 vocabulary and annotation, 61, 120, Maned Duck (detail of wing), photo, 132, 135, 187, 197, 205, 232–3 112 naval drawings, 108 Maned or Wood Duck and Drake, New Holland Cassowary or Emu Hawksbury Duck and Drake or (Dromaius novaehollandiae), John Australian Wood Duck and Drake Watts, engraving, 54 (Chenonetta jubata), Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour with gold leaf, New Holland Crimson-billed Gull, Indigenous name ‘Tan-na-rang’, 122–3 Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, Marlborough, Duke of see Blandford, 134, 135c Lord New Holland Goatsucker, artist Martin, Joseph, 32 unknown, watercolour, 97 ‘Masked lapwing’ (Vanellus miles), New Holland Snipe (Gallinago Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, hardwickii), Port Jackson Painter, 130 watercolour, 98 Masked Lapwing or Spur-winged New Holland Tern, artist unknown, Plover, (Vanellus miles), artist watercolour, 164 unknown, watercolour, 128 New Holland Tern, Thomas Watling, Mathews, Gregory, 120 watercolour, 164c, 165 Melaleuca ericofolia, or Swamp A New South Wales native sticking fish paperbark, James Sowerby, hand while his wife is employed fishing coloured engraving, 202c, 203 with hooks and lines in her canoe, Menzies, Archibald, 32 Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, Merops ornatus, artist unknown, c.1797, 158–9 watercolour, 102 Norfolk Island, 42, 86–7, 87, 88, 89 Merops ornatus, Sydney Bird Painter, Norfolk Island Pine (Dombeya excelsa), watercolour, 103 Ferdinand Bauer, engraving, 249 Merops ornatus…Variegated Bee-eater, artist unknown, c.1799, watercolour, North Arm of Broken Bay New South Wales from an Island at the 102 entrance Sepr 1789, William Bradley, metallic leaf, 112–14, 116 watercolour, 50 Method of Climbing Trees, Port Northumberland, Duke and Duchess, Jackson Painter, watercolour, 76, 224 77c Nuttall, Thomas, 33, 230 Milne, J., 28 Mimosa, artist unknown, watercolour, 13, 28c, 29 orchid drawings, 197, 200, 200–1, 201, Mitchell, Sir Thomas, 224 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, Mountain devil (Lambertia formosa), 209, 218, 219, 234 artist unknown, watercolour, 23 Owlet Nightjar (Aegotheles cristatus),

index

receives Australian drawings from Grose, 71 de Labillardière, 81 Paterson, 70 Westall, 80 White, 66, 86, 230, 232, 234, 236 receives Australian plants from Brown, 80 Caley, 82 King, 82 Littlejohn, 149 Paterson, 70 Phillip, 77, 79 White, 66 reputation as botanist, 22–3, 224, Iredale, Tom, 120 237 and restoration of Kew Gardens, James Edward Smith, John Rising, 228 oil, 24 sale of library, 11, 15, 230 Japanese Snipe (Gallinago hardwickii), Lambert, Catherine, 24–5, 35, 224 Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, Lambert Drawings 99 bought by Lord Derby, 10 Jaune (copyist), 141 copied from Watling Collection, Johnson, Richard, 58, 71, 75 86, 89, 135, 156, 161, 162, 166, 167, Jones (draughtsman), 71, 75 187, 195 Journal of a Voyage to New South cross referenced with Watling Wales (White), 53, 161 Collection, 120, 232 dating of, 167, 172 Kangaroo or the Pattagorang in the act identity of copyists, 141, 146–7 of setting off on hearing a noise, naming of, 89 Eastern grey kangaroo (Macropus significance of, 15–16, 19, 240–1 giganteus), Port Jackson Painter, Lambertia formosa, 23 watercolour, 62c, 63 Kangaroo Rat (Perameles nasuta), Port Lambertia formosa, after Ferdinand Bauer, hand coloured engraving, Jackson Painter, watercolour, 238 146, 147c Kennedy, Lewis, 31 Lambertia Formosa, Henry Charles Kew gardens, 228 Andrews, hand coloured engraving, King, Anna Josepha, 82, 83 20 King, Philip Gidley, 42, 82, 83, 140 Latham, John, 89, 120, 135, 137, 230, King, Philip Parker, 225 232–3 Knowsley Hall, 11, 13 Latham Collection, 135 Knowsley Hall, F.O Morris, colour Latham museum, 25 woodblock print, 10c, 11 Laughing Jackass (Dacelo gigas), Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, La Pérouse expedition, 81, 140 229 Labillardière, Jacques-Julien de, 81 Lear, Edward, 13 Lambert, Aylmer Bourke see Lee, James (junior), 230, 236 also Derby Collection; Lambert Lee, James (senior), 31, 230 Drawings Leopard orchid (Diursis probably A Description of the Genus Pinus maculata); Cyanicula caerulea, (Lambert), 26 William Paterson, watercolour, early years, 24 202c, 203 family life, 24–5, 35 Lewin, John, 68, 92 financial affairs, 11, 229 generosity, 26, 35, 220, 226–7, 230 Lhotsky, John, 226 gift for friendship, 22, 26, 28, 30–1, The Lieutenant Governor’s Cottage at New Norfolk…Van Diemen’s Land, 35, 224–5 Joseph Lycett, watercolour, 144–5 as insatiable collector, 22–6, 30–3, Linnean Society, 26–7, 68 35, 224–6 Little Grebe (Pocideps ruficollis), as keen gardener, 30–1 Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, letters, 25, 28, 30, 228 225 Linnean Society and, 26–7, 68, Little saw shark (Pristiophorus 225, 230 cirratus), Port Jackson Painter, Lord Blandford and, 30–1 watercolour, 72–3 Lord Derby and, 10–11, 15 Littlejohn, Robert, 147 old age, 224–7 Liverpool Museum, 13, 15 portrait, 23 Hooker, Sir William, 224, 228 Hume, Sir Abraham and Lady, 30 Hunt, William Henry, 146 Hunter, John, 41, 49, 92, 113 Common bronzewing (Phaps chalcoptera) and Forest grass tree (Xanthorrhoea media), watercolour, 117 Dollarbird (Eurystomus orientalis), watercolour, 107 Hunter Collection, 92 Hyacinth orchid (Dipodium), artist unknown, watercolour, 234–5

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Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, 96

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size - GEO: RapeR, George Raper, watercolour with metallic leaf or paint, 113 Pacific Heron (Ardea pacifica), artist Port Jackson Painter unknown, watercolour, 227 drawings in the Watling Collection, ‘Pacific Roller’, Port Jackson Painter, 52, 92, 105, 161, 187, 195 watercolour, 106 identity, 52 Pallas, Peter Simon, 32–3 as possible copyist, 94, 96, 105 Palmer, Thomas Fyshe, 82 Port Jackson Painter: drawings by Park, Mungo, 31 Banded Goatsucker, watercolour, 97 Parker, Thomas Lister, 30 A Banksia, watercolour, 239 Parkinson, Sydney, 135 A Banksia called ‘the Honey tree Parrot’s beak orchid (Pterostylis of New South Wales’ (Banksia nutans), possibly by William serrata or possibly aemula), Paterson, watercolour, 232 watercolour, 138 Part of the Crew of His Majesty’s Ship Banksia spinalosa, Indigenous name Guardian endeavouring to escape in ‘Wallangra’, watercolour, 239 the Boats, Robert Dodd, aquatint, Barracouta (Leionura atu), 56 watercolour, 156 Paterson, William, 43, 68, 71, 147, 171, The black Swan the size of an 184, 197 English Swan Native name Mulgo (Buchardia umbellata) orchid, (Cygnatus atratus), watercolour, William Paterson, watercolour, 124, 125c 202c, 203 Blue-bellied Parrot (Trichoglossus Leopard orchid (Diursis probably haemotodus), watercolour, 64c, maculata); Cyanicula caerulea, 65 watercolour, 202c, 203 Bottle brush (Callistemon citrinus), orchid drawings, 197, 200, 201, 205 watercolour, 64 Parrot’s beak orchid (Pterostylis Brown Gum Tree, watercolour, 199 nutans), watercolour [possibly by Brown Marsupial-mouse (Antechinus Paterson], 232 stuartii), watercolour, 238 portrait, 68 Cumberland Tree, watercolour, 189 Rock orchid (Dendrobium Eastern native cat (Dasyurus speciosum), incomplete viverrinus), watercolour, 238 watercolour [possibly by Elephant fish (Callorhynchus Paterson], 219 Antarcticus), watercolour, 72–3 seeks Royal Society membership, Glossy Cuckoo, watercolour, 110c, 111 69–70 Honey Tree of New South Wales, Wax lip orchid (Glossodia major), Indigenous name ‘Wattang-ree’, watercolour, 80 watercolour, 239 Pattersonia, artist unknown, Hook-billed shrike, Grey butcher bird watercolour, 79 (Cracticus torquatus), Indigenous Pavón, Antonio, 25 name ‘Karro-bee-rang’, Persoonia, artist unknown, watercolour, watercolour, 213c, 231 58–9 Kangaroo or the Pattagorang Petrophile pulchella, artist unknown, in the act of setting off on watercolour, 28c, 29 hearing a noise, Eastern grey Philip Gidley and Anna Josepha King kangaroo (Macropus giganteus), and their children…, Robert Dighton, watercolour, 62c, 63 watercolour, 83 Kangaroo Rat (Perameles nasuta), Phillip, Arthur watercolour, 238 collector of plants and drawings, Little saw shark (Pristiophorus 77, 79, 185 cirratus), watercolour, 72–3 as Governor, 42, 48–9, 51, 62, 126, Method of Climbing Trees, 139, 181 watercolour, 76, 77c portrait, 50 Mr White, Harris and Laing with a Pidgeon of Norfolk Island (Hemiphaga party of soldiers visiting Botany novaeseelandiae spadicea), Sydney Bay Colebee…, watercolour, 74–5 Bird Painter, watercolour with gold Native name Goo-ge-na-gan, leaf, 113 Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo ‘Pidgeon of Port Jackson…Geo: Raper, novaguineae), watercolour, 78, 1789’, George Raper, watercolour 79c with metallic leaf or paint, 116 The native name is Buroowang Pigeon of Norfolk Island, Geo Rape, (Macrozamia, possibly watercolour with metallic leaf or Macrozamia communis), paint, 113 watercolour, 58 PIGEON of PORT JACKSON - Natural

New Holland Crimson-billed Gull, Indigenous name ‘Tan-na-rang’, watercolour, 134, 135c New Holland Snipe (Gallinago hardwickii), watercolour, 98 A New South Wales native sticking fish while his wife is employed fishing with hooks and lines in her canoe, watercolour, 158–9 ‘Pacific Roller’, watercolour, 106 Radiated Falcon or Red goshawk (Erythrotriorchis radiatus), watercolour, 233 Red Wax Flower (Crowea saligna), 1788-94, watercolour, 193 Rock orchid (Dendrobium speciosum), watercolour, 218, 219 Slender-billed Creeper, (Acanathorhynctus tenuirostris), watercolour, 101 Swamp Mahogony (Eucalyptus, possibly robusta), watercolour, 198 Unidentified fish possibly stylised Old Wife, Indigenous name ‘Goe-in-mag-gee’ (Enoplosus armatus), watercolour, 157 Unidentified fish possibly Sweep scorpis, Indigenous name ‘Mannadaang’, watercolour, 160 Variegated Bee eater, Indigenous name ‘Dee-weed-gang’, watercolour, 102 View of Governor Phillips House, Sydney-Cove, Port Jackson, watercolour, 238 A View of Sydney Cove – Port Jackson March 7th 1792, watercolour, 40–1, 238 A View of the West side of Norfolk Island and the manner in which the crew and provisions were saved out of His Majesty’s Ship the Sirius, taken from the West side of Turtle Bay after she was wrecked, watercolour, 88 Waratta Grows to the Height of 8 or 10 feet (Telopea speciosissima), watercolour, 60–1 Wattled Bee-eater, Indigenous name ‘Goo-gwar-ruck’, 105 Wattled Sandpiper (Vanellus miles), watercolour, 129 White-faced Pigeon (Leucosarcia picata) , watercolour, 95 Yellow Gum Tree, Native name Goo rung arra, watercolour, 191 Port Jackson Painter Collection, 161 Portland, Dowager Duchess, 24 Portrait of Alexander Macleay, artist uncertain, oil, 25 Possibly Bitter pea (Daviesia mimosoides), artist unknown, watercolour, 204, 205c Possibly Blue Groper (Achoerodus

gouldii), artist unknown, watercolour, 136 Possibly Old Wife, artist unknown, watercolour, 157 provenance of collections, 91–2, 120, 135, 230, 232–4, 236, 239–40 Pulteney, Dr Richard, 24, 220–1 Purple donkey orchid (Diursis punctata or possibly alba) with Golden donkey orchid detail (Diursis aurea), possibly by William Dawes, watercolour, 208, 209c Purple Swamphen or Purple Gallinule (Porphyrio porphyrio), artist unknown, watercolour, 170 Radiated Falcon or Red goshawk (Erythrotriorchis radiatus), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 233 Raffles, Sir Stamford, 33 Rainbow Lorikeet, artist unknown, c.1797, watercolour, 10 Rainbow Lorikeet, artist unknown, 1790s, watercolour, 169 Rainbow Lorikeet, artist unknown, undated, watercolour, 168 rainbow lorikeets, 10, 166, 168, 169 Raper, George, 43, 44, 89, 110, 112, 114, 205, 209, 214 Raper, George: drawings ‘Pidgeon of Port Jackson…Geo: Raper, 1789’, watercolour with metallic leaf or paint, 116 Pigeon of Norfolk Island, Geo Rape, watercolour with metallic leaf or paint, 113 The Settlement on Norfolk Island, May 16th 1790, George Raper, watercolour, 55 VIEW of the WEST SIDE of SIDNEY BAY NORFOLK ISLAND Shewing…the WRECK of Hs. Ms. Sp. SIRIUS…, watercolour, 88 Raper Collection, 89, 91, 110, ch4 [Red Honey-myrtle], artist unknown, watercolour, 24 Red Wattle-Bird (Anthochaera carunculata), Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, 104 Red Wax Flower (Crowea saligna), artist unknown, c.1797, watercolour, 192 Red Wax Flower (Crowea saligna), Port Jackson Painter, 1788-94, watercolour, 193 Red-breasted or Blue-bellied parrot, Indigenous name ‘Goeril’, Thomas Watling, watercolour, 168 Red-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus banksii), artist unknown, watercolour, 16 Rock orchid (Dendrobium speciosum), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 218 Rock orchid (Dendrobium speciosum), possibly William Paterson,

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watercolour, 219 Roe, John Septimus, 225 Ross, Robert, 41, 48, 205, 214 Ross Set, 41 Roxburgh, John, 31 Ruiz, Hipólito, 25

cristatus), watercolour, 96 Pidgeon of Norfolk Island (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae spadicea), watercolour with gold leaf, 113 Red Wattle-Bird (Anthochaera carunculata), watercolour, 104 Spotted quail thrush (Cinclosoma punctatum), watercolour, 95 Wedge-Tailed Shearwater (Puffinus pacificus), watercolour, 90 White-Naped Honeyeater (Melithreptus lunatus), watercolour, 100 Wunga-Wungee Pigeon (Leucosarcia picata) December 1791, watercolour, 95 Yellow Robin (Eopsaltria australis), watercolour, 100–1 Young Mt Pitt Bird, watercolour, 92c, 93 Sydney Cove medallion (Wedgwood), 126, 126 Tawny Frogmouth (Podargus strigoides), artist unknown, watercolour, 12 Tench, Watkin, 46 Turnbull, Alexander, 91 Turnbull Collection, 91, 92, 113, 114

South Wales…, Joseph Lycett, watercolour, 142–3 A View of the Tree at Botany Bay wh yields ye Yellow Balsam, & of a Wigwam, Arthur Bowes Smith, watercolour, 36–7 A View of the West side of Norfolk Island, taken from the West side of Turtle Bay, artist unknown, watercolour, 87 A View of the West side of Norfolk Island and the manner in which the crew and provisions were saved out of His Majesty’s Ship the Sirius, taken from the West side of Turtle Bay after she was wrecked, Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 88 VIEW of the WEST SIDE of SIDNEY BAY NORFOLK ISLAND Shewing… the WRECK of Hs. Ms. Sp. SIRIUS…, George Raper, watercolour, 88 von Humboldt, Alexander, 225 A Voyage to New South Wales (White), 53

Wallich, Nathaniel, 25 Waratta Grows to the Height of 8 or 10 feet (Telopea speciosissima), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 60–1 watermarks, 167, 171 Watling, Thomas as convict, 172, 180–1, 230, 232 Unidentified [fish], artist unknown, impressions of New South Wales, watercolour, 135–6 58, 174, 177–8 Unidentified fish, Indigenous name as John White’s artist, 52–3, 131, 172, ‘Karra gnorra’, Thomas Watling, 174, 177–8, 181 watercolour, 173 as plagiarist, 177–8, 180 Unidentified fish, possibly Thomas Watling, Thomas: drawings by Watling, watercolour, 173 Acacia, possibly hispidula; NarrowUnidentified fish possibly stylised Old leaf drumsticks (Isopogon Wife, Indigenous name ‘Goe-inanethifolius), watercolour, 197 mag-gee’ (Enoplosus armatus), Port Bittern (Botaurus poiciloptilus), Jackson Painter, watercolour, 157 watercolour, 176, 177c Unidentified fish possibly Sweep Bottlebrush (Callistemon sp.), scorpis, Indigenous name watercolour, 34, 35c ‘Mannadaang’, Port Jackson Painter, Ciliary Warbler Male or Grey-backed watercolour, 160 silvereye (Zosterops lateralis), watercolour, 178c, 179 Variegated Bee eater, Indigenous name A Groupe on the North Shore of ‘Dee-weed-gang’, Port Jackson Port Jackson New South Wales, Painter, watercolour, 102 watercolour, 162 Vaux, James Hardy, 127 New Holland Tern, watercolour, Veronica derwentia. New Holland 164c, 165 Veronica, artist unknown, hand Partial view in NSW, facing to the coloured engraving, 148, 149c North West, watercolour, 238 A view in upper part of Port Jackson as possible copyist, 162, 166, 172, when the Fish was shot, William 180–1 Bradley, watercolour, 50c, 51 Red-breasted or Blue-bellied View of Governor Phillips House, parrot, Indigenous name ‘Goeril’, Sydney-Cove, Port Jackson, Port watercolour, 168 Jackson Painter, watercolour, 238 Stick insect annotated ‘Native name A View of Sydney Cove – Port Jackson Murrungai’, watercolour, 137 March 7th 1792, Port Jackson Unidentified fish, Indigenous name Painter, watercolour, 40–1, 238 ‘Karra gnorra’, watercolour, 173 View of the Heads, and part of Botany Unidentified fish, watercolour Bay - from the End of Cooks River [possibly by Watling], 173 about 8 miles from Sydney - New

index

punctatum), Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, 95 Spotted Sun Orchid (Thelymitra ixioides), artist unknown, watercolour, 26c, 27 Stanley, Edward Smith (Lord Stanley) see Derby, 13th Earl of Staunton, Lady, 33 Salvin, Osbert, 91 Sterna novae Hollandiae, artist Scented Milk Vine (Marsdenia unknown, watercolour, 164 suaveolens), artist unknown, Stick insect annotated ‘Native name watercolour, [Derby Collection], Murrungai’, Thomas Watling, 216–17 watercolour, 137 Scented Milk Vine (Marsdenia Stone, Sarah, 53, 91 suaveolens), artist unknown, watercolour, [Ducie Collection], 217 Stylised drawing of a Sweep Scorpis?, artist unknown, watercolour, 160 ‘Scolopax longirostris’ (Gallinago Swainson, Isaac, 31 hardwickii), artist unknown, Swamp lily (Crinum pendunculatum), watercolour, 98 artist unknown, watercolour, 28c, 29 Scott, Sir Walter, 30 Seaforth, Lord (Francis Mackenzie), 22 Swamp Lily (Crinum pendunculatum), possibly William Dawes, Seton, Robert Anderson see Anderson watercolour, 202c, 203 Seton, Robert Swamp Mahogony (Eucalyptus, Seton Collection, 92 possibly robusta), Port Jackson The Settlement on Norfolk Island, Painter, watercolour, 195, 198 May 16th 1790, George Raper, swans see black swans watercolour, 55 Sweet sarsparilla (Smilax glyciphylla), Seymer, Henry, 24 artist unknown, watercolour, 52–3 Sharpe, Richard Bowdler, 92x Swift parrot or Red shouldered Sims, John, 224 parakeet (Lathamus discolor), artist Sirius shipwreck, 86–7, 88, 89 unknown, watercolour, 44–5 A Sketch of the Museum at Dartford Hall in Kent belonging to Dr. Latham Sydney Bird Painter collection of drawings by, 92, 195 1795, artist unknown, pen and ink, as group of artists, 92, 171 25 as possible copyist, 94, 96, 105, 131 Slender-billed Creeper, use of gold and metallic leaf by, (Acanathorhynctus tenuirostris), 112–14, 116 Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, Sydney Bird Painter: drawings by 101 Brush bronze wing pigeon Smith, Charles, 79, 130 (Phaps elegans). Natural size, Smith, Christen, 31 watercolour, 118 Smith, James Edward, 22, 26–8, 30, 53, Common bronze wing (Phaps 68, 214, 216, 224 chalcoptera), watercolour with Smooth spider bush or Lolly bush gold leaf, 114; detail 112 (Clerodendrum floribundum or Cuculous possibly Brush cuckoo tomentosum), artist unknown, (adult and juvenile), watercolour watercolour, 188 with gold leaf, 109 Smyth, John F.D., 178, 180 Dollar-Bird (Eurystomus orientalis), (Solanum aviculare) The fruit of this watercolour, 106 call’d by the Natives Pommerral Eastern Spinebill (Acanathorhynchus and eaten by them when ripe/ tenuirostris), watercolour, 100 Kammarral, artist unknown, Japanese Snipe (Gallinago watercolour, 14 hardwickii), 99 Sooty Tern (Onychoprian fuscata), Laughing Jackass (Dacelo gigas), artist unknown, watercolour, 163 watercolour, 229 Sowerby, James Little Grebe (Pocideps ruficollis), Christmas bush (Ceratopetalum watercolour, 225 gummiferum), hand coloured Maned or Wood Duck and Drake, engraving, 212, 213c Hawksbury Duck and Drake or Melaleuca ericofolia, or Swamp Australian Wood Duck and Drake paperbark, hand coloured (Chenonetta jubata), watercolour engraving, 202c, 203 with gold leaf, 122–3 A specimen of the botany of New ‘Masked lapwing’ (Vanellus miles), Holland (Smith), 53, 68, 216 watercolour, 130 Spencer-Churchill, George see Merops ornatus, watercolour, 103 Blandford, Lord Owlet Nightjar (Aegotheles Spotted quail thrush (Cinclosoma

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Wattled Sandpiper, Indigenous name ‘Ban-ne-re-ra’ (Vanellus miles), watercolour, 132 White-crowned Honeyeater (Phylidonyris pyrrhopterus), Indigenous name ‘Balganera’, watercolour, 174c, 175 Watling Collection assembled by John White, 8, 15, 52, 86, 92 copied by Lambert, 86, 89, 135, 156, 161, 162, 166, 167, 187, 195 listed and annotated by Latham, 89, 135, 137, 232 missing items, 114, 195, 197 naming, 86, 92, 181 provenance, 230, 232–4, 236 received and held by Lambert, 55, 66, 197, 230, 234, 236 A Wattle (Acacia, possibly Acacia decurrens), artist unknown, watercolour, 38 Wattled Bee-eater, artist unknown, watercolour, 105 Wattled Bee-eater, Indigenous name ‘Goo-gwar-ruck’, Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 105 Wattled Sandpiper, Indigenous name ‘Ban-ne-re-ra’ (Vanellus miles), Thomas Watling (probably),

watercolour, 132 Wattled Sandpiper (Vanellus miles), Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 129 Watts, John, 43, 44 New Holland Cassowary or Emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae), engraving, 54 Wax lip orchid (Glossodia major), William Paterson, watercolour, 80 Webb, Philip Barker, 226 Webster, Catherine Bowater see Lambert, Catherine Wedge-Tailed Shearwater (Puffinus pacificus), Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, 90 Wedgwood medallion, 126, 126 Westall, William, 80 Westringia Eremicola, artists unknown, watercolours, 214–15 White, John see also Watling Collection as collector of drawings, 51–3, 86, 92 as critic of Governor Phillip, 51, 66 manuscripts and publications, 53, 55, 66, 161 relations with Thomas Watling, 52–3, 174, 181 White-breasted Sea eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster), artist unknown, watercolour, 154c, 155

White-breasted sea-eagle, artist unknown, c.1788-93, watercolour, 154 White-breasted Sea-eagle, artist unknown, c.1797, watercolour, 154 White-crowned Honeyeater (Phylidonyris pyrrhopterus), Indigenous name ‘Balganera’, Thomas Watling, watercolour, 174c, 175 White-faced pigeon (Leucosarcia picata) , artist unknown, watercolour, 95 White-faced Pigeon (Leucosarcia picata) , Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 95 White-Naped Honeyeater (Melithreptus lunatus), Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, 100 A wild Dog or Dingo of New South Wales, artist unknown, watercolour, 46 A wild Dog or Dingo of N.S. Wales, artist unknown, monochrome wash, 220 The Wild Orange (Pittosporum undulatum), artist unknown, watercolour, 194 Wilson, Thomas, 53, 216 Woody pear (Xylomelum pyriforme), artist unknown, watercolour, 182

Worgan, George, 39–40, 43, 47, 59, 161–2 Wrasse? possibly Pseudolabrus, artist unknown, watercolour, 173 Wright, William, 31 Wunga-Wungee Pigeon Leucosarcia picata) December 1791, Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, 95 Yellow Gum tree, Native name Goo rung arra, artist unknown, c1797, watercolour, 190 Yellow Gum Tree, Native name Goo rung arra, Port Jackson Painter, watercolour, 191 Yellow Robin (Eopsaltria australis), Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, 100–1 Yellow-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus banksii), artist unknown, watercolour, 16 Yellow-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus funereus), artist unknown, watercolour, iv Young Mt Pitt Bird, Sydney Bird Painter, watercolour, 92c, 93

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