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The Ducie Collection

First Fleet images make acquisition history

The National Library of Australia has purchased 56 rare and exquisite First Fleet watercolours from David Moreton, seventh Earl of Ducie and the Moreton family. The Ducie Collection (http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3563487) is the largest and most significant collection of First Fleet material acquired by the Library since the 1962 purchase of a sketchbook of drawings by Captain John Hunter.

Carefully drawn, many of the paintings are the first visual record of Australian plant and animal species from the hand of a European artist. Attributed to George Raper (1769-1797)(http://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/georgeraper) , a Midshipman on the Sirius, they show the birds and flowers of the Port Jackson area as he perceived them between 1788 and 1790.

The paintings were discovered in 2004 in a storage building at the Tortworth estate in the Cotswolds, England, during a routine valuation. Passed down through generations of the Moreton family, unsigned and undated, their significance was unrecognised. The colours are astonishingly vibrant as a result of the lack of handling and display.

The species depicted include the Crimson Rosella, the now-endangered Swift Parrot, a Laughing Kookaburra and a fairy wren. The artist was clearly fascinated by the brightness of the birds’ plumage and the cheekiness of the parrots. Raper, alone of all the First Fleet artists, used a glittering bronze paint to capture the sheen on the feathers of the Bronzewing Pigeon. The flower paintings include a waratah, boronia, crowea, dendrobium and several lilies.

Unlike voyages of exploration by mariners such as James Cook, the First Fleet carried no professional artists. For visual evidence of the first European impressions of Australian’s flora and fauna, we rely on the work of First Fleet officers such as Hunter and Raper.

Raper spent three periods at Port Jackson: from January to October 1788, from May 1789 to March 1790, and briefly from late February to March 1791. It is likely that the paintings in the Ducie Collection date from the period June to November 1789, when the Sirius was isolated at Careening Cove—now Mosman Bay—for repairs. The floral species in this collection are all spring and summer-flowering, while autumn-flowering banksias are significantly absent.

To establish the paintings’ authenticity and their attribution to Raper, Library conservators and curatorial staff examined them at first hand in April 2005. An analysis of the watermarks in the paper confirmed a probable date in the First Fleet period. The paintings were also compared with a bound volume of watercolours by Raper held by the National Library of New Zealand and with some in the Natural History Museum (http://www.nhm.ac.uk) in London. They matched not only in style but in the individual use of metallic paint. The unbroken provenance of the paintings through the generations of the Moreton family, and the fact that they were discovered with other documents dating from the 1770s, further confirms their authenticity.

The Ducie collection complements the collection of 16 watercolours, manuscripts and maps by Raper, which was purchased by the National Library of Australia in 1999 from a descendant of the artist. It also provides new light on one of the Library’s great treasures: Hunter’s sketchbook of birds and flowers of New South Wales. It is now apparent that Hunter copied many of his drawings from works in the Ducie Collection. The practice of copying, among the naval officers and convicts who made up the body of First Fleet artists, is a well-known phenomenon and was not at the time considered in any way improper. The location of these two important groups of paintings in the Library will allow scholars to compare them and to draw further conclusions about the social relationships among First Fleet officers, and about copying as a method of dealing with a challenging new landscape.

Australians will have their first opportunity to see selected paintings from the Ducie Collection when they tour as part of the exhibition, National Treasures from Australia’s Great Libraries (http://nationaltreasures.nla.gov.au) which opens at the National Library of Australia in late 2005 before touring Australian capital cities.

 

Rock lilyRock lily
Dendrobium speciosum
nla.pic-vn3579494

Swift parrotKing parrot
Alisterus scapularis
nla.pic-vn3579209

WaratahWaratah
Telopea speciosissima
nla.pic-vn3579250

King parrotSwift parrot
Lathamus discolor
nla.pic-vn3579191

Swampy lilySwamp lily
Crinum pedunculatum
nla.pic-vn3579512

Common bronzewingCommon bronzewing
Phaps chalcoptera
nla.pic-vn3579136

Laughing kookaburraLaughing kookaburra
Dacelo novaeguineae
nla.pic-vn3579224

Owlet nightjarOwlet nightjar
Aegotheles cristatus
nla.pic-vn3579475

Glossy black cockatooGlossy black cockatoo
Calyptorhynchus lathami
nla.pic-vn3579495