Samuel Daniell and John Webber: some recently identified drawings

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 18, Issue 1, 1 May 1984, Page 25

Samuel Daniell and John Webber: some recently identified drawings

MOIRA LONG

From Alexander Turnbull’s own collection the Library has three folio volumes of plates illustrating the voyages of Captain Cook, each handsomely bound in green calf, with spine lettering: ‘Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere. Cook’s voyages’. The hand-written title-page of the first volume (accession no. 280), which notes that the plates are ‘very early proofs on French paper’, gives no hint of the original drawings that were also contained in it. Fifteen unsigned pencil drawings of South African natives, often depicted with hunting weapons or beside their dwellings, were found to be bound in throughout the volume. They have now been removed and are part of the Library’s collection of paintings, drawings and prints (ref. A154/21-35). The sizes range from 18 X 14cm. to 26 X 19cm. Identification of these very fine drawings was made thanks to the arrival of a Sotheby’s catalogue in which a number of drawings by the English artist and aquatinter, Samuel Daniell, happened to be illustrated.

The art of aquatint engraving was developed in France, and was introduced to England by Paul Sandby in his Views of South Wales (1775-1776). A number of well-known engravers, among them Rowlandson, Boydell and Westall, were to exploit this technique, which is particularly suited to the illustration of books. However, the greatest contribution to aquatint engraving was made by three members of the Daniell family: Thomas Daniell (1749-1840), a landscape artist and engraver, who taught his nephew, William (1769-1837), and collaborated with him in producing a series of illustrated books; and William’s younger brother, Samuel (1775-1811), who is recognised as the most gifted artist of the three. Samuel’s ability was apparent at an early age; in 1791, when he was just sixteen, he had a painting hung in the Royal Academy. He was also an engraver, but apparently it was more often William who made engravings or aquatints from Samuel’s drawings.

All three were intrepid travellers. In 1784 Thomas and William had journeyed throughout India, subsequently publishing Views of Calcutta (1786-1788) and Oriental Scenery (1796-1808) from the drawings they had made there. Samuel was appointed secretary and

draughtsman to Lieutenant-General Dundas on an expedition to Bechuanaland in 1801, and during this journey he made numerous pencil drawings of the natives and of the animals. These he worked up on his return to England in 1803 and published as African Scenery and Animals (1804), comprising thirty plates, almost certainly aquatinted by his brother William, although the title-page states that they were ‘drawn and engraved by Samuel Daniell’.

A journey to Ceylon in 1805 resulted in the publication of A Picturesque Illustration of the Scenery, Animals, and Native Inhabitants of the Island of Ceylon (1808), probably also engraved by William. The only other illustrated books to which Samuel contributed were Sketches representing the Native Tribes, Animals, and Scenery of Southern Africa (48 soft-ground etchings) and Twenty Subjects of the Tribe of Antelopes (5 plates of mixed aquatint and soft-ground etching), published posthumously in 1820 and 1832 respectively. Samuel’s early death meant that his output was much smaller than that of his relatives. Pencil drawings comprise the bulk of his oeuvre, with some watercolours, and a very few oils. But these original works, considered with the published plates, attest to the freshness of his approach, his fine control of line, sure eye for composition, and mastery of colour.

The fifteen drawings now in the Library’s art collections appeared almost certainly to be the work of Samuel Daniell when compared with the illustrations in the Sotheby’s catalogue. This was confirmed when an examination of the Library’s copy of Sketches ... of Southern Africa showed that among the drawings were the originals for plates 25 and 28. As this is the only published work of Samuel Daniell’s held in a New Zealand library, a comparison with other plates has so far not been possible. The volume of plates held a further important original, now also part of the art collection (ref. A4O/35), the work of the official artist on Cook’s third voyage, John Webber (1750-1793). This is an oval portrait (12 X 9.9 cm.), in pencil, ink and watercolour, of Captain James King (1750-1784), who was second lieutenant on the Resolution, and subsequently commander of the Discovery. Inscribed in pencil, ‘Original drawing by Webber of Capn. King’, it is the original for the 1784 engraving by Bartolozzi after Webber, for which no original had previously been known to exist. This is a significant addition to the pictorial material relating to Cook’s voyages, and to the small but important collection of drawings by Webber in the Alexander Turnbull Library.