Now in Australia: proof engravings prepared for Sir Joseph Banks from plant drawings made by Sydney Parkinson on James Cook’s Endeavour voyage


David Mabberley

Australiana, Vol 47 no 2, May 2025

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Northern bollygum, Blepharocarya involucrigera (Anacardiaceae; Peter Crossing Collection 163/1- 24). Proof engraving, 51 × 35 cm, ‘[ink] Amyroides juglandifolia’, ‘G Sibelius’, from copper plate by Gerard Sibelius, after John Cleveley’s 1775 watercolour, based on Parkinson’s surviving pencil drawing with Banks’s ink inscription ‘Endeavours River’; Wattung-urree or old man banksia, Banksia serrata (Proteaceae; Peter Crossing Collection) 163/1-2). Proof engraving, 46 × 31 cm, ‘[ink ] 2.’ bottom right, from

The Peter Crossing Collection in Sydney recently acquired a set of engravings now identified as very early proof pulls made in London for Joseph Banks’s unpublished Plantarum omnium detectarum Terrarum maris au∫tralis de∫criptiones & figurae (Descriptions & illustrations of all the plants discovered in the lands of the Southern Sea). Professor David Mabberley compares it, the only set in private hands, to other extant sets; it is unique in that some of the engravings bear annotations likely by Banks and/or Daniel Solander, while 20 of the 32 pulls are unrepresented in other collections.

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