C1814

Cape Wiles: taken Feb.19.1802 at 6h.15.p…

Artist:

Rare c.19th engraved coastal profile of Cape Wiles, South Australia by William Westall, artist on board Matthew Flinders seminal survey of the Australia on the Investigator. Cape Wiles was named by Matthew Flinders on 19th February 1802 after the botanist James … Read Full Description

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S/N: FAVTTA-CP-1707–198839

(C098)

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Details

Full Title:

Cape Wiles: taken Feb.19.1802 at 6h.15.p.m.

Date:

C1814

Artist:

William Westall (1781 - 1850)

Condition:

In good condition.

Technique:

Hand coloured copper engraving.

Image Size:

430mm

x 35mm

Paper Size:

455mm

x 65mm

Genuine antique
dated:

1814

Description:

Rare c.19th engraved coastal profile of Cape Wiles, South Australia by William Westall, artist on board Matthew Flinders seminal survey of the Australia on the Investigator. Cape Wiles was named by Matthew Flinders on 19th February 1802 after the botanist James Wiles who was on the Investigator.

Flinders Feb 19, 1802:
In the afternoon of the 19th when the wind had returned to the south, we passed to windward of Liguanea Island, and saw it surrounded with many breakers on its south and west sides. The sloping low point was also visible; and three miles further eastward there was a steep head, with two high rocks and one lower near it, of which Mr. Westall made a sketch. (Atlas, Pl. XVII.)image This projection I named Cape Wiles, after a worthy friend at Liguanea, in Jamaica; it lies in latitude 34° 57’ south, and longitude 135° 38½’ east. Before dark we got sight of a hill situate upon a projecting cape, thirteen miles to the east-south-east of Cape Wiles, and observed the intermediate coast to form a large bight or bay, which I proposed to examine in the morning; and for that purpose we stood off and on during the night, with the wind from the southward.

From: Flinders, M. A Voyage to Terra Australis, undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802, and 1803, in His Majesty’s Ship The Investigator and subsequently in the armed vessel Porpoise and Cumberland schooner.

References:
Ferguson, J. A. Bibliography of Australia Volumes 1-8, Canberra 1976 : 756.
Tooley, R.V. The Mapping of Australia. London 1979 : pp. 77-79.
Perry, T. & Prescott, D. A guide to maps of Australia in books published 1780-1830. Canberra 1996 : 1814..
Ferguson, J. A. Bibliography of Australia Volumes 1-8, Canberra 1976 : 576.
Hill, J. The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages. San Diego 1974 : 614.
Wantrup, J. Australian Rare Books. Sydney, 1987 : 67a.
Ingleton, G. Charting a Continent. Sydney 1944 : 6487.

Collections:
National Library Australia: Bib ID 589314
Royal Collection Trust UK: RCIN 1054637
Silent World Foundation, Sydney.: SKU SF000813
State Library Victoria: CCF 919.4 F64V

William Westall (1781 - 1850)

Westall was a landscape artist born at Hertford, England. He was taught to draw by his elder half-brother Richard (1765-1836), a water-colour painter, Royal Academician and painting teacher to Princess Victoria. In 1799 he was admitted to the Royal Academy School, where he was studying when at 19 he was appointed landscape artist with Matthew Flinders' Investigator expedition to Australia, at a salary of 300 guineas. During the voyage he made a large number of pencil-and-wash landscapes in places visited by the Investigator and a series of coast profiles in pencil. When the Porpoise ran aground on Wreck Reef his sketches were 'wetted and partly destroyed' and, while Westall travelled in China, the drawings, regarded as part of the official record of the voyage, were taken by Lieutenant Robert Fowler to England. There, at the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks, they were handed to Richard Westall to be 'restored to a proper state'. After spending some time in China and India Westall returned to London in February 1805 and sought access to the sketches to paint a picture for exhibition at the Royal Academy and showed a View of the Bay of Pines at the academy later in the year. In the summer of 1805 Westall went to Madeira and twelve months later to Jamaica. After returning to England he painted a series of water-colour views of the places he had visited and these were shown in a Brook Street gallery and at the Associated Artists' exhibition in 1808. Later he received commissions from the Admiralty to paint nine pictures to illustrate Flinders' A Voyage to Terra Australis … (1814), and was engaged by several London publishers to paint water-colours to be reproduced as aquatints.

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