INTRODUCTION: The Derby Collection Comes Home; CHAPTER 1: The Collector; CHAPTER 2: A Curious Land; CHAPTER 3: Lambert's Bridge to Australia; CHAPTER 4: The 'Lambert Drawings'; CHAPTER 5: Collecting, Curiosity and Cargo; CHAPTER 6: Natural Curiosities; CHAPTER 7: The Botanical Albums; CHAPTER 8: Years of Decline; NOTES; SOURCES; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS; INDEX
Summary
Parrots and lorikeets swoop down, vivid, bright and colourful. Black swans glide through the air. Owls stare out from pages, wide-eyed. A sense of awe swept through natural history circles in eighteenth-century London when the first ships returned from Sydney with their cargo of exotic animals, birds and plants - and striking watercolour illustrations. The sudden emergence, in 2011, of a large number of these watercolour illustrations has revealed much about the early years of the colony. In Natural Curiosity, Louise Anemaat uncovers never-before-published works from the artists of the First Fl