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C1814
View in Sir Edward Pellew’s group,…
Artist:
Rare engraved view of Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands, situated in the south-west corner of the Gulf of Carpentaria, by William Westall (1781-1850), the artist on board Matthew Flinders important voyage of exploration on H.M.S. Investigator. The islands lie … Read Full Description
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Details
Full Title:
View in Sir Edward Pellew’s group, Gulph of Carpentaria. sic
Date:
C1814
Artist:
Condition:
In good condition.
Technique:
Hand coloured copper engraving.
Image Size:
227mm
x 192mm
AUTHENTICITY
Genuine antique
dated:
1814
Description:
Rare engraved view of Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands, situated in the south-west corner of the Gulf of Carpentaria, by William Westall (1781-1850), the artist on board Matthew Flinders important voyage of exploration on H.M.S. Investigator.
The islands lie very close to the coast in the south-west of the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia.
They were previously sighted from seaward in 1644 by Tasman, who mistook them for part of a headland that he (and Flinders) called Cape Vanderlin. Westall’s view may be from Observation Island, where Flinders landed, towards the mainland. He noted on 16 December 1802: ‘The botanical gentlemen [Brown, the naturalist and the artist Ferdinand Bauer] landed abreast of the ship, and lieutenant Flinders [Matthew’s brother, Samuel] went to commence a series of observations for the rates of the time keepers on the small isle, thence called Observation Island. My attention was attracted by a cove in the western shore, upon the borders of which, more abundantly than elsewhere, grew a small kind of cabbage palm, from whence it was called Cabbage-tree Cove.’ Westall’s view is also from the west side but apparently not from within this long and shallow cove. Flinders later named the island group after Pellew (subsequently Viscount Exmouth), a celebrated fighting officer and seaman of the French-war period from 1793, but mainly for Pellew’s attempts – while Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies from 1805 – to get him released from French detention on Mauritius.
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”.
References:
Ferguson, J. A. Bibliography of Australia Volumes 1-8, Canberra 1976 : 576.
Wantrup, J. Australian Rare Books. Sydney, 1987 : 67a.
Hill, J. The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages. San Diego 1974 : 614.
Howgego, J. Encyclopedia of Exploration 1800-1850. Sydney 2004 : II, F11.
Sabin, J. A Dictionary of Books Relating to America, from its Discovery to the Present Time. New York. (1936) 1967 : 24758.
Ingleton, G. Charting a Continent. Sydney 1944 : 6487.
Collections:
National Library Australia: Bib ID: 750902
State Library South Australia: 919.4042 F622 d+++
State Library Victoria: RARELTEF 919.4 W 521
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.
