Museum
Museum

Author: Robyn Stacey

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-10-24

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 052187453X

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When the first British visitors arrived on Australia's shores at the end of the eighteenth century, it was not only the potential of its space that tantalised them, but the extraordinary living things that they found there. Every European collector worth his salt desired a kangaroo, a parakeet, a waratah, and ship after ship sailed north loaded with Australia's remarkable natural history specimens. In 1826, the most serious collector to make his own trip to the antipodes arrived - his name was Alexander Macleay, and over 70 years he and his family accumulated an unbelievably rich and diverse collection of specimens from Australia itself and beyond. Museum throws open the doors of a historically rich and rare collection, stunningly captured in the images of Robyn Stacey. It reclaims the stories of those specimens, and those obsessions, revealing another chapter of Australia's own very particular, passionate and unique history.

Annual Report
Annual Report

Author: Public Library, Museum, and Art Gallery of South Australia

Publisher:

Published: 1885

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13:

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Natural Curiosity
Natural Curiosity

Author: Louise Anemaat

Publisher: NewSouth

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1742246788

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Parrots and lorikeets swoop down, vivid, bright and colourful. Black swans glide through the air. Owls stare out from pages, wide-eyed. A sense of awe swept through natural history circles in eighteenth-century London when the first ships returned from Sydney with their cargo of exotic animals, birds and plants – and striking watercolour illustrations. The sudden emergence, in 2011, of a large number of these watercolour illustrations has revealed much about the early years of the colony. In Natural Curiosity, Louise Anemaat uncovers never-before-published works from the artists of the First Fleet, including convicts-turned-watercolourists Thomas Watling and John Doody, and the anonymous 'Port Jackson Painter'. She unravels the complex network of natural history collectors who spanned the globe – eagerly acquiring, copying and exchanging these artworks – from New South Wales Surgeon-General John White to passionate British collector Aylmer Bourke Lambert.