Sydney Parkinson - artist on the Endeavour
Sydney Parkinson was employed by Joseph Banks on the Bark Endeavour. Sydney Parkinson was employed to do the botanical drawings for Joseph Banks. The other artist employed by Joseph Banks on the Endeavour was Alexander Buchan, who was responsible for doing the landscape drawings and paintings. Unfortunately Alexander Buchan had an epileptic fit in Tahiti and thereafter Sydney Parkinson had to do all the landscape drawings as well as the botanical artwork. It was a formidable job and Sydney Parkinson worked extrememely hard. In fact, Sydney Parkinson made 955 drawings of flora and 377 fauna drawings during the voyage of the Endeavour to the South Pacific and Australia.
Sydney Parkinson was Scottish and a Quaker so it is probably understandable that he had a good work ethic. He was twenty three years old when he joined the Endeavour in England. During the voyage to Australia, he drew landscape and figure drawings, indigenous society drawings. The impression that we have of Sydney Parkinson is that of a sensitive thoughtful young man.
A prime example of the art work of Sydney Parkinson on the Endeavour is his drawing of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis which was mainly a way of scientific description and documentation. He had to accurately render the plants' color, texture and structure. At Botany Bay, near Sydney Australia Banks and the other botanists went ashore and collected many specimens. By this time Sydney Parkinson had a significant backlog of work to do. Drawing the plants was the most accurate way of describing plant specimens. Sydney Parkinson had to work fast and accurate to keep up with the collections because the plants faded and died usually within a few days. Sometimes, Sydney Parkinson had to do partial drawings, with outlines and structure and partial rendering of the main colors in patches.
Sydney Parkinson was a very versatile artist who had to draw everything from landscapes to birds, mammals, fish, insects. And on board ship too, with the ship rolling around all over the place. Some of the fish that Parkinson drew were Zanclus cornutus and Arripis trutta. He also drew lobsters from Patagonia and green parrots in Tahiti. Sydney Parkinson also recorded many ethnographic features of the societies that the Endeavour visited. He drew the process and designs of tattoing in Tahiti, Women scraping Bark, and soaking it in water for days in order to make cloth.
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