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Augustus Earle was probably the first
professionally trained freelance travel artist to tour the world. His
unrivalled watercolours painted during his long journey in the 1820s,
faithfully describe his ‘rambling ... peregrinations’ from
South America to the southern Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha,
Van Diemen’s Land, New South Wales, and New Zealand, before he ‘found
his way home’ via several Pacific islands and then Manila, Singapore
and Madras. His sympathetic depictions of the dispossessed indigenous
peoples he encountered around the world, and his written criticism
of zealous missionaries, all point to an artist determined to paint
it as he saw it, regardless of the criticism this sometimes engendered.
The watercolours selected for Travellers Art are intended to show
both the physical progress of Earle’s travels and his interest
in recording the occupations and customs of both the settler and
indigenous peoples he encountered. Earle’s great skill lay
in his ability to imbue these genre scenes, portraits and landscapes
with not only an observational accuracy but also his own highly original,
anecdotal sense of atmosphere and social interaction. Even when Earle
does not include himself within the scene, there is no mistaking
his presence as the first hand witness. Earle was clearly an artist
who loved to travel and who travelled in order to make art. |
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