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C1814
View of Murray’s Islands with the …
Artist:
Rare engraved view of Murray Island, Queensland made by William Westall (1781-1850), the artist on board Matthew Flinders important voyage of exploration on H.M.S. Investigator. Murray Island (Mer) at distant centre and presumably its two small satellites, Dauar and Waier, … Read Full Description
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Details
Full Title:
View of Murray’s Islands with the Natives Offering to Barter.
Date:
C1814
Artist:
Condition:
In good condition.
Technique:
Hand coloured copper engraving.
Image Size:
225mm
x 155mm
Paper Size:
302mm
x 235mm
AUTHENTICITY
Genuine antique
dated:
1814
Description:
Rare engraved view of Murray Island, Queensland made by William Westall (1781-1850), the artist on board Matthew Flinders important voyage of exploration on H.M.S. Investigator.
Murray Island (Mer) at distant centre and presumably its two small satellites, Dauar and Waier, to the left. The view is therefore probably north or north-west. Five sea-going canoes are seen in the middle ground on a calm sea, four under sail. The closest has its twin masts down and stowed, and holds 15 men, six with the canoe’s long paddles in the water and three waving items of potential barter in their raised hands identifiable as unhusked coconuts, probably a quiver or bamboo water container, and a bow: one also holds a large hand of plantain or bananas. This vessel is also clearly an outrigger, as probably are the others. Murray (Mer) is the most easterly of the inhabited islands of the Torres Strait, well north and east of Cape York, the northern point of Queensland, and north of the Great Barrier Reef. The men shown are presumably the Melanesian Meriam people who populated the Torres islands now part of Australia rather than mainland Aboriginals, as their apparent size also seems to suggest.
Flinders account of the meeting on 29 October 1802 makes clear that it occurred on the north-west side of the island, where the ship anchored (which Westall seems to have altered for a better and more distant topographical view).
‘We had scarcely anchored when between forty and fifty Indians came off, in three canoes. They would not come along-side of the ship, but lay off at a little distance, holding up cocoa nuts, joints of bamboo filled with water, plantains, bows and arrows, and vociferating tooree! tooree! and mammoosee! A barter soon commenced, and was carried on in this manner: a hatchet, or other piece of iron (tooree) being held up, they offered a bunch of green plantains, a bow and quiver of arrows, or what they judged would be received in exchange; signs of acceptance being made, the Indian leaped overboard with his barter, and handed it to a man who went down the side to him; and receiving his hatchet, swam back to the canoe…[Saturday 30 October]…. The colour of these Indians is a dark chocolate; they are active, muscular men, about the middle size, and their countenances expressive of a quick apprehension. Their features and hair appeared to be similar to those of the natives of New South Wales, and they also go quite naked; but some of them had ornaments of shell work, and of plaited hair or fibres of bark, about their waists, necks, and ancles. Our friend Bongaree [Flinders’ Aboriginal translator] could not understand any thing of their language, nor did they pay much attention to him; he seemed, indeed, to feel his own inferiority, and made but a poor figure amongst them.’
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.
