C1814

Part of the great Sandy Peninsula taken …

Artist:

Rare early c.19th coastal profile of Fraser Island, from Indian Head, which is at the southern end of Seventy Five Mile Beach, by William Westall, artist on board Matthew Flinders seminal survey of the Australia on the Investigator. Flinders Wednesday, … Read Full Description

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S/N: FAVTTA-CP-1804-QC–230415

(C099)

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Details

Full Title:

Part of the great Sandy Peninsula taken July 28, 1802 at eight a.m.

Date:

C1814

Artist:

William Westall (1781 - 1850)

Condition:

In good condition.

Technique:

Hand coloured copper engraving.

Image Size:

350mm

x 45mm

Paper Size:

475mm

x 85mm

Genuine antique
dated:

1814

Description:

Rare early c.19th coastal profile of Fraser Island, from Indian Head, which is at the southern end of Seventy Five Mile Beach, by William Westall, artist on board Matthew Flinders seminal survey of the Australia on the Investigator.

Flinders Wednesday, July 28, 1802:

Our course at night was directed by the fires on the shore, and the wind being moderate from the south-westward, it was continued until ten o’clock; after which we stood off and on till daylight Wednesday 28 July 1802, and then had Indian Head bearing S. 54° W. one mile and a half. This head was so named by captain Cook, from the great number of Indians assembled there in 1770. Mr. Westall’s sketch of it, taken as we steered close along the shore for Sandy Cape, will show that the same sterility prevailed here as in the southern part of the peninsula; and it continued to the northern extremity. At eleven o’clock we reached Sandy Cape, and the master was sent ahead to sound in a small passage through Break-sea Spit. The ship followed under easy sail, until we got into 3 fathoms; and the master not making the signal for any deeper water, I tacked and called the boat on board. The channel appeared to go quite through the Spit, into Hervey’s Bay; but as there were, in many parts, not more than 2 fathoms, it can be passed only by small vessels..

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.

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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