Sydney Parkinson was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 Quaker, botanical illustrator

Botanical illustrator

A botanical illustrator is a person who paints, sketches or otherwise illustrates botanical subjects such as trees and flowers. The job requires great artistic skill, attention to fine detail, and technical botanical knowledge...

 and natural history

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 artist.

Parkinson was employed by Joseph Banks

Joseph Banks

Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage . Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him,...

 to travel with him on James Cook

James Cook

Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...

's first voyage to the Pacific in 1768. Parkinson made nearly a thousand drawings of plants and animals collected by Banks and Daniel Solander

Daniel Solander

Daniel Carlsson Solander or Daniel Charles Solander was a Swedish naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Solander was the first university educated scientist to set foot on Australian soil.-Biography:...

 on the voyage. He had to work in difficult conditions, living and working in a small cabin surrounded by hundreds of specimens. In Tahiti

Tahiti

Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...

 he was plagued by swarms of flies which ate the paint as he worked. He died at sea on the way to Cape Town

Cape Town

Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

 from dysentery

Dysentery

Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...

 contracted at Princes' Island off the western end of Java

Java

Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...

. Banks paid his outstanding salary to his brother.

Parkinson is commemorated in the common and scientific name of the Parkinson's Petrel

Parkinson's Petrel

Black Petrel , also called the Parkinson's Petrel, is a large, black petrel, the smallest of the Procellaria. The species is an endemic breeder of New Zealand, breeding only on islands off the North Island, on Great Barrier Island and Little Barrier Island. At sea it disperses as far as Australia...

 Procellaria parkinsoni. The great Florilegium

Banks' Florilegium

Banks' Florilegium is a collection of copperplate engravings of plants collected by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander while they accompanied Captain James Cook on his voyage around the world between 1768 and 1771...

 of his work was finally published in 1988 by Alecto Historical Editions in 35 volumes and has since been digitized by the Natural History Museum in London.

In 1986 he was honoured on a postage stamp

Postage stamp

A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...

 depicting his portrait issued by Australia Post

Australia Post

Australia Post is the trading name of the Australian Government-owned Australian Postal Corporation .-History:...

 http://www.australianstamp.com/images/large/0015740.jpg.

The following are some examples of Parkinson's artistic work:

See also

• Visual arts of Australia
• List of Australian botanical illustrators
• European and American voyages of scientific exploration
  European and American voyages of scientific exploration
  The era of European and American voyages of scientific exploration followed the Age of Discovery and were inspired by a new confidence in science and reason that arose in the Age of Enlightenment...
  
  

External links

• Parkinson's posthumously published Journal, 1773, online at the National Library of Australia
  National Library of Australia
  The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...
  
  

Further reading

• de Bray, Lys (2001). The Art of Botanical Illustration: A history of classic illustrators and their achievements, pp. 72, 77. Quantum Publishing Ltd., London. ISBN 1-86160-425-4.