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C1789
Great Brown Kings Fisher.
Artist:
The first printed image of the Kookaburra collected from mainland Australia and printed in London on November, 12th 1789. The first engraving of a Kookaburra from a specimen given to the French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat at the Cape of Good … Read Full Description
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Details
Full Title:
Great Brown Kings Fisher.
Date:
C1789
Artist:
Condition:
In good condition.
Technique:
Hand coloured copper engraving.
Paper Size:
217mm
x 297mm
AUTHENTICITY
Genuine antique
dated:
1789
Description:
The first printed image of the Kookaburra collected from mainland Australia and printed in London on November, 12th 1789.
The first engraving of a Kookaburra from a specimen given to the French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat at the Cape of Good Hope by Joseph Banks was in 1770. Banks instructed Sonnerat to deliver the specimen to fellow naturalist Dr Philibert Commerson in Mauritius. Sonnerat sailed there, giving it to Commerson’s draughtsman, Paul Philippe Sanguin de Jossigny who made a sketch of it. However, following Commerson’s premature death in 1773, Sonnerat not only kept Jossigny’s illustration but unscrupulously signed it and passing it off as his own work, and included it in his book on New Guinea, with an added a caption indicating that it came from New Guinea.
Later when the British ornithologist John Latham described Bank’s remaining specimen of the Kookaburra in 1782 in his A General Synopsis of Birds, he perpetuated Sonnerat’s error, which explains how the bird obtained its early scientific name Dacelo novaeguineae although it doesn’t occur there.
Banks had caught several Kookaburras while exploring Australia’s east coast on Cook’s first voyage of discovery in the Endeavour. The Kookaburra is only native to open woodland and forests of Eastern Australia, with the exception of Cape York (it was introduced to south-western Australia and Tasmania). It doesn’t occur in New Guinea.
Kookaburra (in various forms) was recorded from different indigenous languages,…Perhaps the earliest is that of Bennett (1834), who recorded that ‘the Natives at Yas (sic) call the bird “Gogera or “Gogobera“.
The following are Aboriginal words for Kookaburra; Guuguubarra in Wiradjuri, Jawawoodoo in Gooniyandi, Kuukakaka in Paakantyi.
Common name: Kookaburra
Binomial name: Dacelo novaeguineae
First described: Johann Hermann 1783 (New Guinea specimen)
Distribution: Australian wide (Not NT)
From: Phillip’s, Voyage to Botany Bay
References:
Ferguson, J. A. Bibliography of Australia Volumes 1-8, Canberra 1976 :: 47.
Wantrup, J. Australian Rare Books. Sydney 1987 :: 5.
Hill, J. The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages. San Diego 1974 :: 1346.
Collections:
State Library Victoria: RARELTF 994.02 P54V
National Library Australia: Bib ID 7334867
:
Ferguson, J. A. Bibliography of Australia Volumes 1-8, Canberra 1976 :: 47.
Wantrup, J. Australian Rare Books. Sydney 1987 :: 5.
Hill, J. The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages. San Diego 1974 :: 1346.
Collections:
State Library Victoria: RARELTF 994.02 P54V
National Library Australia: Bib ID 7334867
:
Sydneham Edwards (1768 - 1819)
Initially worked for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, until a dispute with the publishers when he started his own rival magazine The Botanical Register. He was born in Monmouthshire, a from an early age demonstrated a precocious talent for drawing and when only 11 years old had copied plates from Flora Londinensis. A friend of William Curtis, the publisher visited the Edwards and recommended the boy to Curtis. Curtis proceeded to have Edwards trained in both botany and botanical illustration. Edwards was a prolific talent and between 1787 and 1815 he produced over 1,700 watercolours for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. He established The Botanical Register in 1815 after a disagreement with John Sims, Curtis’s editor.
