Parkinson, Sydney (1745? - 1771)

By the mid-1760s, Parkinson had begun to establish a reputation in London, having studied with the artist and fashionable interior designer, William de la Cour. In 1765 he exhibited a floral painting on silk and was associated with the Free Society of Artists during 1765-6 in whose exhibitions several of his paintings appeared.

Drawn to botanical illustration, Parkinson came to the attention of Joseph Banks through the horticulturist, James Lee, to whose daughter he gave painting lessons. Banks hired Parkinson to draw natural history specimens on the Endeavour Voyage at a salary of eighty pounds a year.

During the course of the voyage, Parkinson drew landscapes and people he encountered as well as drawings of plants and animals collected by Banks and Daniel Solander. Researchers associated with the British Museum of Natural History have documented 674 surviving line drawings and 269 watercolour illustrations of plants. These drawings were to form the basis of over 700 engravings that remained unpublished until the 1980s.

Parkinson also kept a series of journals aboard Endeavour that were posthumously published by his brother, Stanfield Parkinson, in 1773. For Parkinson died of amoebic dysentery or possibly typhoid about a month into the leg of the voyage between Batavia and Cape Town.

Controversy surrounded the publication of Parkinson's journals. For on the Endeavour reaching England, Stanfield Parkinson laid claim to his brother's property as under a will made before his sailed for the Pacific. Banks argued that Parkinson's records of the voyage were his by right of having hired him, but eventually he agreed to pay the Parkinson family 500 pounds, a sum covering the remainder of Parkinson's salary and the estimated value of his drawings, journals and various artifacts he had collected.

However, Banks allowed Stanfield Parkinson to borrow the journals, which Stanfield promptly copied with a view to publishing what would be the first substantial account of the voyage. This prompted a legal injunction restraining Parkinson from publishing his edition of his brother's journals until after the publication of the official account of the voyage by John Hawkesworth.

In the official account of the voyage, Hawkesworth made no mention of Parkinson, even though he made use of the artist's journals. Also, Parkinson gained no acknowledge as the creator of the original drawings on which several of the engravings prepared for Hawkesworth's book were based.

• Natural History Museum, Art Collections at the Natural History Museum: Sydney Parkinson, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/library/art/drawingconclusions/more/hibiscus_more_info.htm#park. [ Details ]
• Parkinson, Sydney, A journal of a voyage to the South Seas, in His Majesty's ship, the Endeavour, faithfully transcribed from the papers of the late Sydney Parkinson ... : embellished with views and designs, delineated by the Author, and engraved by capital artists. Online edition derived from the London edition: Printed for Stanfield Parkinson the editor: and sold by Messrs Richardson and Urquhart ...; Evans ...; Hooper ...; Murray ...; Leacroft ...; and Riley ..., 1773., South Seas, 2004, http://paulturnbull.org/projects/southseas/index_voyaging.html. [ Details ]