Darwin at Weatherboard - the Stories Behind the Story

Charles Darwin, part way through his five year voyage on the HMS Beagle, arrived in Sydney only 48 years after the First Fleet.  Within a few days of his arrival, he was riding westwards to the new inland city of Bathurst, stopping around midday at an inn called Weatherboard.

It was located not far from my home, on the banks of Jamison Creek, and the area is now Wentworth Falls.  Darwin detoured to see the already famous falls, and wrote much in his journal about the remarkable landscape through which he was travelling.

To commemorate the 200th anniversary of his birth, Cambridge University Press published an anniversary edition of Charles Darwin in Australia.  It is a fascinating work, containing many facsimile exerpts of entries in his notebooks and journals, as well as drawings by such famous artists as Conrad Martens - a former shipmate of Darwin who had taken up residence in the colony of New South Wales.

Darwin's visit predates the existence of such technology as cameras, so the illustrations in the book are taken from paintings and drawings by artists such as Martens.  Other artists are drawn upon to provide images of the scenery Darwin saw, as well as the plants and animals.  One who is mentioned in the book is "the famous artist, John Gould" - another acquaintance of Darwin.

Yet, according to SLNSW Curator Margot Riley, Sydney Morning Herald, 2017-12-27, most of the illustrations in Gould's Birds of Australia were done by his wife, Elizabeth.  Riley states that "Gould was not an artist" and that Elizabeth Gould's "exquisite work became almost totally eclipsed by the fame of her husband" - John designed the plates for his book, and carefully supervised their production, but the artwork was hers.

Elizabeth did the 84 plates while raising six children, and when she died, John Gould employed a number of artists and illustrators to fill her role in the production of his books.  It seems somehow sad that brilliant artists like Elizabeth were so often consigned by cultural mores of their times to walk in the shadows.