C1814

View from near Cape Byron taken July 25, 1802 at sunset.

Artist:

$A 525

Rare c.19th coastal profile of the Byron Bay coast by William Westall, artist on board Matthew Flinders seminal survey of the Australia coast on the Investigator. Flinders Sunday, July 25, 1802: Cape Byron is a small steep head, projecting about … Read Full Description

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S/N: FAVTTA-CP-1803-NC–230414

(C002)

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Details

Full Title:

View from near Cape Byron taken July 25, 1802 at sunset.

Date:

C1814

Artist:

William Westall (1781 - 1850)

Condition:

In good condition.

Technique:

Hand coloured copper engraving.

Image Size:

395mm

x 50mm

Paper Size:

450mm

x 90mm

Genuine antique
dated:

1814

Description:

Rare c.19th coastal profile of the Byron Bay coast by William Westall, artist on board Matthew Flinders seminal survey of the Australia coast on the Investigator.

Flinders Sunday, July 25, 1802:

Cape Byron is a small steep head, projecting about two miles from the low land, and in coming along the coast makes like an island; its latitude is 28° 38’, and longitude 153° 37’, or 7’ east of the situation assigned to it by captain Cook. There are three rocks on its north side; and in the direction of N. 57° W., eight or nine leagues from it, is the peaked top of a mass of mountains, named by its discoverer Mount Warning; whose elevation is about 3300 feet, and exceeds that of Mount Dromedary, or any other land I have seen upon this East Coast. To Mr. Westall’s sketch of this remarkable peak image it may be added, that the surrounding hills were well covered with wood, whose foliage announced a soil more fertile than usual so near the sea side.

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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