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22-488: Lewin was the son of a professional scientific artist, William Lewin , who was the author of an eight-volume work The Birds of Great Britain (1789–94). William Lewin's two sons, John William and Thomas, worked with him preparing work. William acknowledges their work in the preface to his book. Around 1797, John Lewin was keen to visit New South Wales . John Lewin planned to travel on HMS Buffalo for New South Wales in 1798 to record ornithological and entomological life for

44-740: A British patron, Dru Drury . Somehow he missed this voyage but his wife travelled on it and arrived 3 May 1799. Lewin did travel on the Minerva , arriving 11 January 1800, becoming the first resident professional artist in the colony. The resulting books were intended to fund his passage home, but the fashion for Australian natural wonders was already fading by the time he published Prodromus Entomology , Natural History of Lepidopterous Insects of New South Wales , in 1805. Only six copies of his next book, Birds of New Holland with their Natural History , published in 1808 in London, have survived, which suggests that

66-581: A crowd of around 5,000, approximately 20,000 spectators (around a sixth of Adelaide's population) turned up. The crowd became rowdy and police had to clear the performance space before the event could begin. Profits from the show were assigned to the Aboriginal people. The corroboree was so successful that other performances were arranged at other venues. Also at this time, the first football match held between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal teams in Adelaide

88-672: A practical collector and artisan. He found it difficult to write about science – indeed his own text for Birds of New South Wales is naive and simple. Rather he excelled as an observer, and although never a great natural history artist, brought to his own work a keen sense of observation and design. Indeed, his interaction with Australian flora and fauna sharpened his eye and art: he moved from producing very conventional natural history illustrations in England to strongly composed images set in local context in Australia. While he did not succeed as

110-539: A public pan-Aboriginal dancing "tradition of individual gifts, skill, and ownership" as distinct from the customary practices of appropriate elders guiding initiation and other ritual practices (ceremonies). The word is described in the Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia (2nd ed.) as "an Indigenous assembly of a festive, sacred or warlike character". Throughout Australia the word "corroboree" embraces songs, dances, rallies and meetings of various kinds. In

132-404: A publisher or printmaker, his large-scale natural history watercolours of exotic Australian plants and animals appear to have found a steady market. He also seems to have had ambitions to be considered a professional artist, as opposed to simply an illustrator: he noted in 1812 that he had painted a 15 x 18 foot image of a corroboree . Lewin appears to have permanently settled in Australia, where he

154-457: A small farm near Parramatta , but by 1808 they were living in Sydney where the artist advertised his services as a portrait miniaturist . Governors Philip Gidley King and William Bligh were early patrons. Governor Macquarie , recognising the usefulness of a professional artist to his schemes for the colony, and to guarantee him an income, appointed him city coroner in 1810, and included him in

176-546: A volume on butterflies, "The papilios of Great Britain, systematically arranged, accurately engraved, and painted from nature, with the natural history of each species, from a close application to the subject, and observations made in different countries of this kingdom; as well as from breeding numbers from the egg, or caterpillar, during the last thirty years", in 1795. Lewin was buried at Edmonton on 10 December 1795. The First Edition of Birds of Great Britain and their Eggs almost immediately suffered from being broken-up for

198-459: A warlike character. A word coined by the first British settlers in the Sydney area from a word in the local Dharug language , it usually includes dance, music, costume and often body decoration . The word "corroboree" was adopted by British settlers soon after colonisation from the Dharug ("Sydney language") Aboriginal Australian word garaabara , denoting a style of dancing. It thus entered

220-467: A widow and a son. His tombstone can be found at Botany Bay Cemetery. He is commemorated in the names of two birds, Lewin's rail ( Lewinia pectoralis ) and Lewin's honeyeater ( Meliphaga lewinii ) . His background as a natural history artist made Lewin an acute observer of the reality of the Australian landscape and its fauna and flora: critic Robert Hughes comments that he was the first to record

242-518: The Australian English language as a loan word . It is a borrowed English word that has been reborrowed to explain a practice that is different from ceremony and more widely inclusive than theatre or opera. In 1837, explorer and Queensland grazier Tom Petrie wrote: "Their bodies painted in different ways, and they wore various adornments, which were not used every day." In 1938, clergyman and anthropologist Adolphus Elkin wrote of

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264-617: The 1815 official inspection party of new lands discovered beyond the Blue Mountains . Lewin's watercolours of this expedition are now held by the State Library of New South Wales. Macquarie also commissioned illustrations of plants collected by the surveyor-general, John Oxley, in his explorations of the country beyond Bathurst , the Liverpool Plains and New England . Lewin died in Sydney on 27 August 1819 leaving

286-447: The distinct "look" of Australia without being blinded by European art conventions, and according to art historian Bernard Smith, "Lewin grasped the nature of the eucalyptus, its light translucent foliage through which the horizon may be seen, and the nature of the slender and feathery grasses of the interior. He succeeded, too, in portraying an authentic bush atmosphere." Walter Wilson Froggatt stated in his memoir of Lewin: "he collected

308-546: The images which were not copies of the First Edition work, but entirely new and very much more detailed. Lewin died suddenly in 1795 having completed only the first 103 copper-plates himself. His sons (Thomas, Thomas William and John William ) completed the remaining plates (104-336) after Lewin's death. In 1791 his friend John Latham sponsored Lewin's membership of the Linnean Society . Lewin also produced

330-407: The individual watercolors, most of which have, as a consequence, been lost or destroyed. The Second Edition has also suffered in this way and complete copies are now also extremely rare with less than 30 known complete examples remaining. Corroboree A corroboree is a generic word for a meeting of Australian Aboriginal peoples . It may be a sacred ceremony , a festive celebration, or of

352-401: The insects in all stages of development, studied their life histories, noted their food plants, and made accurate coloured drawings from the living insects". Although Lewin was made an Associate of the Linnean Society , he was not part of the scientific milieu which surround significant naturalists such as Robert Brown , Sir Joseph Banks , or Alan Cunningham . Rather his training was that of

374-528: The past a corroboree has been inclusive of sporting events and other forms of skill display. Another description is "a gathering of Aboriginal Australians interacting with the Dreaming through song and dance", which may be a sacred ceremony or ritual, or different types of meetings or celebrations, which differ "from mob to mob". The largest spectator event of the 19th century at the Adelaide Oval

396-440: The previous twenty years. It included 323 watercolour sketches of each of the 271 of birds and 52 plates of eggs, all which he hand-painted himself for the 60 copy first edition, a total of 19,380 individual paintings. Assisted by his three sons, he immediately began work on a second edition which was issued in parts from 1793 to 1801. The Second Edition, of 150 copies, was produced using copper plates onto which Lewin directly scribed

418-518: The remaining copies were somehow lost. An 1813 edition of the latter, made up from cast-off prints and pulls, was the first illustrated book to be engraved and printed in Australia. Birds of New South Wales , of which thirteen copies have survived, is considered one of the great Australian bibliographic rarities. Lewin's own, very basic, text was printed by the Government Printer George Howe . Lewin and his wife were granted

440-647: Was one of the few professional artists, a fact from which he gained socially and professionally. William Lewin William Lewin (1747–1795) was an English naturalist and illustrator. Lewin grew up in Stepney , the son of a rate mariner. In 1776 he was earning a living as a pattern drawer, and by 1783 was describing himself as a painter. He specialised in natural history subjects. In 1789 he began to issue his The Birds of Great Britain, with Their Eggs, Accurately Figured , which he had been working on for

462-492: Was organised by Football and Cricketing Association secretary John Creswell , and a second followed at the oval on 2 June 1885. The Macquarie Dictionary (3rd ed, 1997) gives secondary meanings "any large or noisy gathering" and "a disturbance; an uproar". It also documents its use as a verb (to take part in a corroboree). The Macquarie Atlas documents a 2003 sports carnival in the Northern Territory which

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484-511: Was the "Grand Corroboree", performed by around 100 Aboriginal men and women from Point MacLeay mission and Yorke Peninsula on Friday 30 May and Saturday 1 June 1885. They had been invited to Adelaide by the colonial government perform at the request of the Governor of South Australia , Sir William Robinson , to perform as part of the Queen's Birthday celebrations. After organisers expected

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