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C1814
Cliffs, distant 5 or 6 miles: taken Jan.26.1802 at five p.m.
Artist:
Rare coastal profile of the Great Australian Bight, by William Westall, artist on board Matthew Flinders seminal survey of the Australia on the Investigator.Flinders, January 26, 1802. Flinders Jan. 26, 1802: Our course from noon was nearly east at the distance … Read Full Description
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Full Title:
Cliffs, distant 5 or 6 miles: taken Jan.26.1802 at five p.m.
Date:
C1814
Artist:
Condition:
In good condition.
Technique:
Hand coloured copper engraving.
Image Size:
460mm
x 75mm
AUTHENTICITY
Genuine antique
dated:
1814
Description:
Rare coastal profile of the Great Australian Bight, by William Westall, artist on board Matthew Flinders seminal survey of the Australia on the Investigator.Flinders, January 26, 1802.
Flinders Jan. 26, 1802:
Our course from noon was nearly east at the distance of five or six miles from the shore and we ran at the rate of between seven and eight knots, under double-reefed top-sails and foresail. Abreast of our situation at half-past two the level bank again closed in upon the shore, and formed cliffs very similar to those along which we had before run thirty leagues. Their elevation appeared to be from four to six hundred feet, the upper part was brown, and the lower two thirds white but as we advanced, the upper brown stratum was observed to augment in proportional quantity. We could not distinguish, as before, the smaller layers in the two strata and from the number of excavations in the white part, apparently from pieces having fallen down, I was led to think the lower portion of these cliffs to be grit stone rather than calcareous rock. The bank was not covered with shrubs, as before it came to the water side, but was nearly destitute of vegetation, and almost as level as the horizon of the sea.
Flinders Jan. 26, 1802:
Our course from noon was nearly east at the distance of five or six miles from the shore and we ran at the rate of between seven and eight knots, under double-reefed top-sails and foresail. Abreast of our situation at half-past two the level bank again closed in upon the shore, and formed cliffs very similar to those along which we had before run thirty leagues. Their elevation appeared to be from four to six hundred feet, the upper part was brown, and the lower two thirds white but as we advanced, the upper brown stratum was observed to augment in proportional quantity. We could not distinguish, as before, the smaller layers in the two strata and from the number of excavations in the white part, apparently from pieces having fallen down, I was led to think the lower portion of these cliffs to be grit stone rather than calcareous rock. The bank was not covered with shrubs, as before it came to the water side, but was nearly destitute of vegetation, and almost as level as the horizon of the sea.
From of Flinders hydrographic atlas, A voyage to Terra Australis…, sheet XVII, London : G. and W. Nicol, 1814.
Full title of the atlas;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.
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.
