Sarah Stone

Sarah Stone

1760 - 1844

"Sarah Stone painted watercolours. She was both talented and meticulous in her observation and recording of the objects she painted. She began by painting for pleasure, but was soon commissioned to paint the contents of Sir Ashton Lever’s museum - one of the most comprehensive and extraordinary of the many collections that were being made in the wake of the new scientific discoveries in the Americas and Australasia. It was an exciting period. Zoological, botanical and ethnographical objects were being brought back to the West for the first time, and Sarah Stone was one of the first artists to paint objects from Australasia and the South Seas. She painted over a thousand watercolours of birds, mammals, fishes, insects … including many brought back from Captain Cook’s three round-the-world voyages. Her watercolour paintings form a unique record of the discoveries made by sailors and naturalists on board British survey ships and in the new colonies in the 1780s and 1790s". 

Extract:  Sarah Stone Natural Curiosities from the New Worlds, Christine E. Jackson, Merrell Holberton and The Natural History Museum, London, 1998, Introduction.

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