Sydney Parkinson and the Endeavour Expedition

The Natural History Museum of London, England has produced an excellent website devoted to the artwork of Sydney Parkinson. On a voyage of the HMS Endeavour (1768-1771) captained by James Cook and accompanied by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, Sydney Parkinson illustrated 674 outline drawings and completed 269 paintings. Unfortunately, Parkinson died at sea during the voyage home, and his unpainted outline drawings were later completed by others.

Over 30000 plant specimens were collected on the voyage (representing over 3600 species) including roughly 1400 species which had not yet been described by Western botanists.

Links:

The Endeavour Botanical Illustrations website, which has a searchable database of most of the artwork from the voyage
Endeavour's Scientific Impact on the BBC History website
Biography of Sydney Parkinson on the PlantExplorers.com website

Gaultheria mucronata from the Alpine Garden at UBC : Gaultheria (Pernettya) mucronata as a coloured engraving by Daniel Mackenzie

Website about the Endeavour botanical illustrations discovered via MetaFilter.

Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 7:13 PM on January 4, 2004

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