First Fleet artwork collection

Bird, facing to the left with its head pointing upwards, perched on a branch with some foliage attached against a plain background. The bill is open to display a forked tongue. The head is black, the throat white with a dark brown patch, and the belly yellow. The back is grey, overlaid with darker hatched lines, with black wings. The tail is black on top and grey underneath. The drawing is framed by a pencil border and annotated in ink and pencil.

• Port Jackson Painter]
• The drawing is annotated in ink at bottom "Natural size".
• The drawing is unsigned and undated.
• The drawing is inscribed in ink at top right with the number "102.". This refers to the catalogue list compiled by John Latham c. 1801 which was acquired with the drawings, and is filed with them at the end of the Watling Drawings series.
• The drawing is annotated in pencil at top "Slender-billed Creeper Sup 2 p. 165 pl. 129". This has been copied in ink at bottom, "Slender-billed Creeper Latham Syn Suppt 2 p. 165 pl 129." The page reference is to Latham's Second Supplement to the General Synopsis of Birds (1802).
• This bird was more recently identified as the Eastern Spinebill, Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris in Hindwood K. A. (1970).
• The drawing is annotated in pencil at top "Lambert Drawing II. 80", and in ink at bottom "Latham Vol 2 - 80" ("Latham" in error for Lambert). This refers to a related set of drawings from the collections of the 13th Earl of Derby, held in the Library at Knowsley Hall, Lancashire.
• A separate label is attached to the mount alongside the drawing is inscribed in pencil "Refers to Lambert Drawing" (see above).
• A second label, attached to the mount alongside the drawing at lower right, is inscribed in pencil "Type".
• The author of this catalogue record is Suzanne Stenning.
• By permission of the trustees of the Natural History Museum (London)
• Two sets of transparencies held in the Natural History Museum (London) Zoology Library and Picture Library: Picture Library reference number 12181
• James Lee of Kensington : purchased ; 1902
• Data sheet available.
• Latham, John. Supplement II to the General Synopsis of Birds. London: Leigh, Sotheby, 1802.
• Hindwood K. A. 'The "Watling" drawings with incidental notes on the "Lambert" and the "Latham" drawings', Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales for the years 1968-69 (1970).
• This drawing is reproduced in Wheeler, A. and Smith, B, The Art of the First Fleet and other early Australian Drawings. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1988. (Plate 200, p. 187)