“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary…”
Pablo Picasso
John William Lewin is considered the first professionally trained artist to arrive in Australia. Many sketches and watercolours had been produced by botanists and naturalists, dating back to Sir Joseph Banks. To purists this was amateur scientific documentation and not art. In 1798, Governor John Hunter was informed that JW Lewin had been appointed the first official artist of the new colony. Lewin had quite a time of it. He missed his ship, the Buffalo (yes that Buffalo), although strangely his wife didn’t. Several months behind schedule he arrived in NSW to find his wife remarried to one of the ship’s officers. Lewin spent most of his first year in Sydney, prostrate with the flux. When he finally got around to some art, he produced a series of remarkable watercolours featuring Australian birds. Sadly, art did not pay well and eventually Lewin abandoned full time painting to take up an appointment as the first coroner for NSW. #artbirdswiveswatercoloursandflux #letsmakelemonade
Pen Paint and Scalpel 