The Natural History Drawings of the Endeavour Voyage, 1768–1771 (Natural History Museum, London)

Overview

The Natural History Museum was founded in 1881, though the origins of its core collections date back to the 18th century. Upon his death, Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) bequeathed his extensive collection of natural specimens and other curiosities to the nation, forming the core of the British Museum. Over the years, as the British Museum acquired additional collections, it became necessary to construct a separate museum to display the natural history collections in their own space, resulting in the Natural History Museum. Today, the museum houses an extraordinary collection of over 70 million of plant and animal specimens, including those amassed by the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820) during his 1768–1771 journey with Captain James Cook aboard the HMS Endeavour. Banks and his civilian entourage — which included a botanist, his secretary, two artists, four servants, and two dogs — joined the standard naval complement of 85 men when the Endeavour set sail from Plymouth harbor on August 26, 1768. The primary objective of Cook's expedition was to improve oceanic navigation by charting the transit of Venus from Tahiti, making it the first to be organized specifically for scientific exploration. Over the course of the three year–long journey, Cook was also able to establish that New Zealand was not part of terra australis incognita, a mythical "southern continent" erroneously introduced by Aristotle as a counterweight to the landmass of the Northern hemisphere. In this way, the Endeavour's explorations contributed significantly to contemporary geographic, oceanographic, and astronomic knowledge. Of equal importance are the scientific contributions made by Banks and his retinue, as they collected and documented more than 1000 animal species and 3600 plant species, approximately 1400 of which were previously unknown.

With the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the museum has digitized these watercolors and drawings, both those executed by Parkinson during the Endeavour voyage, as well as the paintings later completed from his initial sketches by artists in Banks' employ, such as Frederick Polydor Nodder, John Frederick Miller, and John Cleveley II.

As the Endeavour followed its westward route around the globe, the resident naturalists would collect specimens along the way. During ship's occasional landfalls, Banks would venture on shore, frequently joined by Daniel Solander (1736–1782), a fellow botanist and pupil of Carl Linnaeus. Together, they collected animal and plant specimens and brought them back to the ship to be illustrated by Sydney Parkinson (1745–1771). As Parkinson sketched from the plant or animal specimen, Solander would take scientific notes on each sample, classifying and naming them according to the system developed by Linneaus, while Banks would record the location of the find. This system worked well until Cook decided chart the eastern coast of New Holland (Australia) in May 1770. Over 70 days of exploration in Australia, Banks and Solander would add over 1000 new species to their growing collections. The sheer number of their plant discoveries prompted Cook to dub their initial landing site Botany Bay (present–day Sydney). Due to the volume of new specimens, Parkinson resorted to sketching brief outlines, leaving certain areas partially colored, presumably to be completed at a later date. Sadly, Parkinson contracted a fatal fever while the ship was docked for repairs in Batavia (present–day Jakarta, Indonesia). When the ship finally reached Plymouth on July 12, 1771, the members of the expedition returned to instant fame and wide admiration. Quickly promoted by the Admiralty, Cook would go on to command two other voyages across the Pacific, in 1772–1775 and 1776–1780. The scientific community eagerly awaited the publication of Banks' definitive catalogue of the scientific results of the Endeavour expedition, based on the collected specimens and Parkinson's drawings. Before his untimely death, Parkinson had managed to finish only a third of his watercolors, so Banks commissioned other artists to complete them, also hiring engravers to cut copper plates from these finished watercolors. Regrettably, Banks would never complete this project, and the entire set of 700+ cooper plate engravings produced under Banks' supervision between 1772–1784 would remain unpublished until the Natural History Museum (with Alecto Historical Editions) reproduced them as Banks' Florilegium in 1989.

Upon his death, Banks bequeathed his collections to Robert Brown, his librarian, who, in turn, passed them on to the British Museum. Although Banks was never able to publish his Endeavour findings, the specimens that he collected, as well as the drawings, watercolors, and engravings that he commissioned, were preserved at the Natural History Museum. With the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the museum has digitized these watercolors and drawings, both those executed by Parkinson during the Endeavour voyage, as well as the paintings later completed from his initial sketches by artists in Banks' employ, such as Frederick Polydor Nodder, John Frederick Miller, and John Cleveley II. The Endeavour illustrations are available through ARTstor with over 950 images, approximately two thirds of which consist of botanical illustrations, while the remaining third depict zoological subjects.

Collection information

* Image totals should be regarded as an approximation until a given collection is 100% complete. Users should also bear in mind that the number of images available to them may vary from country to country, reflecting ARTstor’s approach to addressing an international copyright landscape that itself varies from country to country.

Last updated: May 16, 2008

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