WESTALL AND BAUER

In the National Library of Australia News (February 2007) I outlined the way in which the then Royal

Colonial Institute acquired the bulk of the drawings made by William Westall A.R. A. (1781 – 1850)

during the voyage around Australia of the “Investigator”, captained by Matthew Flinders (1801 – 1803).

These drawings are now owned by the National Library of Australia and have been reproduced

comprehensively in “Westall’s Drawings” published by the Royal Commonweath Society in 1962.

A few further pictures relating to Australia by or attributed to William Westall have appeared since then

and now 19 pencil drawings of trees by this artist drawn between 1801 and 1806 have surfaced. They

were acquired by the Natural History Museum from a descendant of the artist and consist of sketches of

trees in Australia, China, India and Jamaica. When the voyage around Australia was completed in 1803

Westall travelled to China and India before returning to England in 1805. He then went to Madeira and

Jamaica before returning home.

William Westall’s drawings of trees have recently occasioned comment. Prof. Michael Rosenthal, in

a lecture given to the National Maritime Museum in 2005 remarked, commenting on Westall’s drawing

“Hawkesbury River No 3” (1802): “The drawing is immediately interesting in appearing to

cope easily with representing completely unfamiliar terrain and as unfamiliar trees”. Rosenthal also

referred to ”the ease with which Westall has drawn eucalyptus.”

This is only the most recent observation regarding Westall’s botanical work. Rex Reinits In “Early

Artists in Australia” found “two botanical sketches of remarkable fidelity, one of a gum-tree and the

other of a banksias. Westall’s trees were to become quite a feature of his work in Australia.”

Dr Bernard Smith in an essay within “Westall’s Drawings” stated that “Westall (made) drawings of the

eucalyptus, grass tree, palm, pandanus, hoop pine, banksias (etc) in their natural settings. They were

made, not as botanical records, but as working drawings for larger compositions”. Smith also drew

attention to the fact that Westall became “increasingly concerned with the delineation of the peculiarities

of the Australian vegetation, an interest which led to individual tree studies.”

Bernard Smith noted the suggestion by Johann Lhotsky (1795 – 1866) made in W.J. Hooker’s “London

Journal of Botany” in 1843 that the engravings of Westall’s pictures in Flinders’ “Voyage to Terra

Australis” (1814) inclined him to think Ferdinand Bauer (1760 – 1820) assisted Westall “for I know no

book where plants and groups of foreign trees…are portrayed with such surpassing beauty and truth”

Ferdinand Bauer, the botanical artist assigned to the “Investigator” voyage, was a superb artist and it is

doubtless reasonable to conjecture that the older man gave tuition to young Westall. Thomas Perry in the

introduction to “Westall’s Drawings” suggested that Westall “perhaps with Ferdinand Bauer by his

side” showed him how to portray “accurately the form and foliage of the vegetation”. However the 19

drawings which have now surfaced depicting trees drawn by Westall, many when Bauer was far distant

show the mistakenness of Lhotsky’s opinion and underline effectively the fact that Westall did not

need Bauer to assist him. Indeed, the authenticity of Westall’s work is confirmed by no less than four

founder members of the Linnaen Society, Aylmer Lambert, Jonas Dryander, Richard Salisbury and

William Maton who recommended William Westall in June 1805 to become a member of that Society,

to which he was duly elected in December of that year. One thing is now certain, if it was not before:

Elisabeth’s Findlay’s view in her most interesting and beautifully illustrated book “Arcadian Quest:

William Westall’s Australian Sketches” (NLA, Canberra 1998) that “Westall did not have the

temperement for the painstaking and relentless work involved in scientific drawing” is groundless.

The nineteen sketches by William Westall are in the process of conservation and cataloguing but below

is a tentative listing (those in bold can be viewed). Original numbering has been retained.

1. Calabash Tree. Jamaica? India?

2. Tamarisk Tree. India - can be seen on The Art Fund internet site

3. Castor Oil Tree. India?

4. Palm. Fan Palm? Australia?

5. Tall Tree. China/India?

6. Palm. Similar to”Westall’s Drawings” 120.

7. Tree with leguminous climber. Jamaica

8. Palm Australia?

9. Pimiento. Jamaica

10 Not known not Australia

11 Possibly Australian tree with smaller drawings of fruit

There are no drawings 12 – 15

16 Asiatic tree – possibly lychee type fruit with the word “sour”

17 Asiatic tree – not known

18 Bamboo. China.

19 Fan Palm. Australia. Sketches of detail similar to “Westall’s Drawings” 121

20 Palm. Australia with sketches of detail

21 Logwood. Jamaica with sketches of detail

22 Cotton Tree. Jamaica

23 Palm - Australia

There is also a drawing in the author’s possession similar to 18 Bamboo China, signed WW. The two

sketches are the basis of Westall’s fine painting “The Hong Kong Merchants Garden” which was shown

at the Royal Academy in 1814 as “View in a mandarin’s garden” and at the British Institution (1843)

with the same title. There is both an oil and a water colour version of this picture – the latter once

owned by a renowned gardener Mr Loddiges of Hackney. In the manuscript by Robert Westall for the

obituary of his father Robert described the Chinese view with its “feathery bamboo and the ariel palm.”

(the word ariel was changed to lofty in the published article).

It is important to note that in “Westall’s Drawings” Thomas Perry notes with relation to three drawings

Nos 120, 121 and 122 that they “do not show sufficient botanical detail to permit positive identification.

None of them appears to be an Australian species and it is possible that these three drawings were made

during Westall’s visit to the West Indies.” However the tentative view at the Natural History Museum’s

Botany Library that 6 and 19 above are of Australian trees.

Together with the Westall drawings at the Natural History Museum are six or seven drawings by

Ferdinand Bauer. There is uncertainty about one, a Tree Fern because it is thought that it may be a

Westall drawing. The other five are of Norfolk Island which Bauer visited in 1804. The landscapes of

Norfolk Island have something of Westall’s influence in them and if Westall had not been in Asia at the

time one might be forgiven for attributing them to him.

Five of the drawings have been fully catalogued. Two were reproduced by R. Nobbs in “Norfolk Island

& its first settlements 1778 – 1814” (N. Sydney NSW). They were also reproduced by David Moore in

“London Archives of Natural History 25” (1998). This includes some rough preliminary sketches on the

reverse of one drawing. There is one other drawing of Norfolk Island not catalogued. The illustration

used here (not depicted in Nobbs’s book) is catalogued as “Grove of tree ferns with shallow valley

beyond and (left) stumps”.

Evidence of the long term relationship between Bauer and Westall is to be found in

Bauer’s great work “Flora Graeca”, a series of 10 volumes published between 1810 and 1840. In “The

Flora Graeca Story. Sibthorp, Bauer and Hawkins in the Levant” (OUP 1998) Walter Lack writes that

“Bauer’s work stopped after the seventh title page; the remaining three were probably all executed by

William Westall, perhaps drawn by Imrie and not Bauer” Niniam Imrie, who died in 1820 was a

Captain in the Royals.The coloured engraving in Volume 9 (published 1837) entitled “Physcus” gives

W.Westall as the artist while those in Volumes 8 and 10 give no such information although attribution to

Westall would seem reasonable. Westall did quite a number of tasks for publishers bringing illustrations

by amateur artists up to the required standard for publication. This engraving is in the Radcliffe Science

Museum, Oxford. In “Flora Graeca”the text suggests the view of Physcus (Marmaris) was probably

sketched by Imrie during a stop on their way from Istanbul to Cyprus, and later William Westall seems

to have used it for a coloured drawing, now lost”

Walter Lack establishes in his book that Bauer and Westall discovered together the caniverous plant

Cephalotus follicularis Labill (Cephalotaceae) at King George’s Sound, Western Australia on New

Year’s Day 1802 and it is clear Westall adopted Bauer’s colour coding, used to recall the colours of

botanical specimens, in his tree illustrations.

The overall experience of viewing the 19 drawings by William Westall in the collection at the Natural

History Museum, together with a number of delicately drawn detailed insets, is that most probably

Ferdinand Bauer and William Westall had a profound influence on each other during the voyage of the

“Investigator”, Bauer taking the role perhaps of “paternal guide” to balance Matthew Flinders’s more

authoritative orders and that Robert Brown, the ship’s naturalist with Bauer instilled a respect for botany

and scientific depiction that benefited Westall’s work in Australia and elsewhere. Westall’s main

botanical work was with trees; his trees are always accurate and well drawn, a definite bonus for any

topographical and landscape artist.

Richard J. Westall