Augustus Earle (1793–1838) was born to travel and to paint. Living in the era before photography, Earle was one of the world’s most irrepressible travel artists. His paintings are valuable both as works of art and as documentary records of historic and ethnographic significance. This publication gives an overview of some of Earle’s most significant works held by the National Library of Australia.
An award-winning zoologist travels in Charles Darwin's footsteps, and in search of the meaning of life. In one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, zoologist Lloyd Spencer Davis comes face to face with an enraged leopard seal. Towering ice cliffs, a ferocious creature of the deep, and the extreme Antarctic environment all turn Davis's world view on its head. 'What the hell am I doing here?' This question sets Davis on a quest for insight and meaning in a world that still pitches theories of evolution against belief in a Creator; the science of natural selection against a faith that asserts our world was crafted by Intelligent Design. With a self-deprecating grin packed along with his cabin baggage - even when his passport isn't - Davis decides to follow the travels of the eminent nineteenth-century naturalist, Charles Darwin: the man who did more to change our understanding of this planet than any other biologist. Looking for Darwin gives us a personal and intimate insight into Darwin and what drove the man. It is also an attempt to resolve that initially panicked — and then far-reaching — question, that first hit Davis on the big ice. With a wealth of research and vivid imagery — along with a disarming honesty —Lloyd Spencer Davis takes the reader on an unforgettable world tour.
A timely and original look at the role of the eyewitness account in the representation of slavery in British and European art Gathering together over 160 paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints, this book offers an unprecedented examination of the shifting iconography of slavery in British and European art between 1760 and 1840. In addition to considering how the work of artists such as Agostino Brunias, James Hakewill, and Augustus Earle responded to abolitionist politics, Sarah Thomas examines the importance of the eyewitness account in endowing visual representations of transatlantic slavery with veracity. "Being there," indeed, became significant not only because of the empirical opportunities to document slave life it afforded but also because the imagery of the eyewitness was more credible than sketches and paintings created by the "armchair traveler" at home. Full of original insights that cast a new light on these highly charged images, this volume reconsiders how slavery was depicted within a historical context in which truth was a deeply contested subject. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
This text provides an interdisciplinary examination of the geographical nature of culture and society in 18th-century Britain and the British world. The book's introduction identifies the key areas of study as the geographical constitution of empire, the Enlightenment and the public sphere. These themes are explored by examining the connections between space, place and landscape in the 18th century in relation to the emergent empire in the Caribbean and north-west America, and Britain itself. Under consideration are topics such as landscape art, London's art world, geography books, mapping, the geography of erotic fiction, provincial science and the production of domestic space in the early English novel. This collection offers substantial empirical evidence and should be a valuable contribution to 18th-century studies for research and teaching staff, postgraduates and advanced undergraduate students in geography, history, literary studies, the history of art, postcolonial studies and the history of science.
The Beagle has become synonymous with Charles Darwin and his groundbreaking title On the Origin of Species. But how did Darwin come to be on board? For the first time in a single volume all the various strands of the Beagle story have been woven together to reveal the circumstances that set the expedition in motion and the characters who circumnavigated the world together. Enriched with first-hand commentary from personal letters and diaries, and the official narrative of the voyage, as well as artworks, sketches and charts produced by the shipboard artists and surveyors, James Taylor has produced a thoroughly engaging and informative account that will appeal to historians, scientists, art lovers, and anyone with a sense of adventure.
Travellers Art presents rare, late eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century drawings, watercolours, sketchbooks, diaries, hand-drawn maps, manuscripts and photographs, all of which were created while travelling. Selected from the National Library's collections for their first-hand immediacy and fidelity to the subject, they are the personal narratives of travelling artists, diarists and explorers.
Ochre and Rust offers a fresh perspective on frontier relations between Australian Aboriginal people and European colonists. Nine museum artefacts take the reader into a fascinating zone of encounter and mutual curiosity between collectors and those indigenous people who piqued or responded to their interest. While colonialism is the broad frame, details gleaned from archives, images and the objects themselves reveal a new picture of interaction between individual Aboriginal people and European collectors. Philip Jones explores and makes sense of particular historical moments in colonial history, when Aboriginal people perceived and expected other, more elusive outcomes. Ochre and Rust, an elegantly written challenge to received wisdom about the colonial frontier, has won Australia's inaugural Prime Minister's Award for Literary Non-Fiction.
This book looks at the ways in which travelling artists influenced early western attitudes towards distant lands, and examines how far the artist's own vision of these places was a distorted one, affected by many factors
Early in 1836 Charles Darwin spent two months in Australia as part of his voyage around the world on the Beagle. During this time he visited the town of Sydney, travelled on horseback across the Blue Mountains to Bathurst, visited Hobart in Tasmania, and called into King George Sound in Western Australia. Darwin met with several of the leading figures of the Australian colonies, including members of the King and Macarthur families in Sydney, and Alfred Stephen and George Frankland in Hobart.
