FIELD SPORTS, &c. &c. Of the Native Inhabitants of New South Wales; with ten plates, by the Author.
Dedicated, by permission, to Rear Admiral Bligh, Late Captain General, & Governor in Chief, in & over His Majesty's Colony of New South Wales and its Dependencies. Pp. [20](including index to Foreign Field Sports), plus 10 hand-coloured aquatint plates; demy 4to; later (mid twentieth century?) half calf, brown cloth boards, upper board lettered in gilt, edges a trifle rubbed, spine faded; free endpapers lightly offset, a little light foxing and occasional slight soiling; Edward Orme, London, 1813[1814?]. First edition. F.551 (and 577); Abbey, Travel in Aquatint and Lithography 1770-1860, 2; see also Wantrup, pages 280-283. *'The first Australian coloured plate book properly so-called [and] . . . the first separate account of the Aborigines' [Wantrup page 282]. This is the New South Wales supplement to Foreign Field Sports, Fisheries, Sporting Anecdotes &c. &c., also issued as a separate 18 page publication, in wrappers. The presence in this copy of the index leaf suggests that it was extracted from the first edition of Foreign Field Sports (1814). Three plates in this copy are watermarked 1818, suggesting that this is a late issue, but the text leaves are unpaginated, and it has the 1813 title page. (In the 1819 second edition of Field Sports the New South Wales supplement does not have a separate title page and the text pages are numbered). Julien Renard has suggested that, despite the 1813 date on the title page, the supplement was probably not issued separately before the main work in 1814. John Heaviside Clark, whose name is printed on each plate, was a commercial artist working in London at the time, and there is no evidence of him ever visiting Australia. The identity of the author of the text, and of the artist who provided the original sketches has not been established, but it seems likely that the subjects were drawn from life. 'The plates represented in vivid style and delicate details various aspects of Aboriginal life in the wild. Some of the plates show hunting scenes such as kangaroo hunting, fishing, bird hunting and smoking-out possums. Other plates represent aspects of tribal life such as a corroboree, trial by spear, a war party and a night scene in a camp. The plates are justly celebrated and are without question the most attractive and sympathetic of the early European depictions of the native inhabitants' [Wantrup, page 280]. Australia's first professional artist, John William Lewin, who was working in New South Wales at the time, has sometimes been suggested as the original artist. Item #166234
Price: $7,000.00