Two of the Natives of New Holland, Advancing to Combat

Two of the Natives of New Holland, Advancing to Combat is a drawing by Sydney Parkinson, drawn in 1770 and published posthumously as an etching by Thomas Chambers in the 1773 book A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas.[1][2] It is the earliest known portrayal of an Australian Aboriginal person by a European,[citation needed] and a typical example of a painting in the noble savage ideal, showing proud warriors advancing in defence of their land.[3] The stance of the warriors is said to be based upon the Borghese Gladiator.[4]

Etching of Two of the Natives, as published in 1773.

References edit

  1. ^ Smith, Bernard (1992). Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages. Yale University Press. pp. 91, 93. ISBN 978-0-300-05053-0.
  2. ^ Nugent, Maria (5 May 2009). Captain Cook Was Here. Cambridge University Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-521-76240-3.
  3. ^ Douglas, Bronwen (June 2003). "Seaborne Ethnography and the Natural History of Man". The Journal of Pacific History. 38 (1): 3–27. doi:10.1080/00223340306072. ISSN 0022-3344. S2CID 219627977. The episode is visually memorialised in an engraving by Thomas Chambers ennobling the two men 'as classical heroes' and published in Parkinson's posthumously edited Journal
  4. ^ McCann, Ben (2015). Framing French Culture. University of Adelaide Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-1-922064-87-5.