Sarah Stone (artist)

Sarah Stone (c. 1760 – 1844), later known as Sarah Smith, was an English natural history illustrator and painter. Her works included many studies of specimens brought back to England from expeditions in Australia and the Pacific. Her illustrations are amongst the first studies of many species and are as scientifically significant.[1][2]

Work
New Holland Cassowary by Sarah Stone c.1789-1790

Stone was the daughter of a fan painter.[3] She worked as a draftsman, natural history and scientific illustrator, and painter between 1777 and 1820.[1] She was commissioned by Sir Ashton Lever in the 1770s to sketch and paint images of objects in his Leverian Museum.[4] which included specimens brought back by British expeditions to Australia, the Americas, Africa and the Far East in the 1780s and 1790s.[5] She exhibited as an "Honorary Exhibitor" at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1781, 1785 and 1786.[1] Stone created numerous watercolour paintings of specimens sent by John White, the First Surgeon General of the Australian colony, between 1789 and 1790. These paintings were used to produce engravings for White's A Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales (1790).[6][7] Although beautiful and skilfully drawn the drawings were sometimes compromised by the fact that she was working from skins collected in Australia and reconstructed by a taxidermist in London to reproduce an animal or bird that had never been seen. Her collection of more than a thousand water colours based on specimens from the Leverian Museum were dispersed along with the museum items auctioned in 1806. Some of her paintings were acquired by the Natural History Museum, London while others went into private collections. They may be valuable in resolving some species described by J.F. Gmelin, the specimens of which are now untraceable.[8]

Stone's work is held by the British Museum, the National Library of Australia, and the State Library of New South Wales.[1]

Personal life

On 8 September 1789 Stone married John Langdale Smith.[9]

Images by Sarah Stone - A journal of a voyage to New South Wales.[10]

References
  1. Perry, Barbara. "Sarah Stone b. c.1760". Design and Art Australia Online. Design and Art Australia. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  2. "Quaternary fissure breccia". Natural History Museum. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
  3. Walters, M. P. (2004). "Birds depicted in a folio of eighteenth century water-colours by Sarah Stone". Archives of Natural History. 31 (1): 123–149. doi:10.3366/anh.2004.31.1.123.
  4. Lemmer, Leone. "The Sarah Stone Collection". Australian Museum. Australian Museum. Retrieved 11 November 2015.
  5. Jackson, Christine E. (Christine Elisabeth); Stone, Sarah, -1844; Natural History Museum (London, England) (1998), Sarah Stone : natural curiosities from the New Worlds, Merrell Holbertson : The Natural History Museum, London, ISBN 978-1-85894-063-2CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. A Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales. 1790. Printed for J. Debrett. 1790 – via Biodiversity Heritage Library.
  7. Dickson, Nicola Jan (2010). Wonderlust: the influence of natural history illustration and ornamentation on perceptions of the exotic in Australia (PDF) (Doctor of Philosophy). Australian National University. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  8. Jackson, C. E. (1998). Sarah Stone, natural curiosities from the new worlds. London: Merrell Holberton & The Natural History Museum.
  9. "Collection Record for Stone, Sarah, ca. 1760-1844". State Library of New South Wales. Government of New South Wales. Retrieved 20 May 2015.
  10. White, John (1790). A journal of a voyage to New South Wales. London: Printed for J. Debrett. doi:10.5962/bhl.title.101702.
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