First Fleet artwork collection

Bird on tree stump, facing to the left with its wings outstretched and seen slightly from above, so that both wings are visible. There is a landscape view at the base of the tree stump. The bird's head is grey with a white throat; the back is grey with a white rump, and the tail dark brown. The wings are brown with a central band of orange. The drawing is framed by a pencil border and annotated in ink and pencil.

• Thomas Watling]
• The drawing is annotated in ink at bottom "3/4s of its Natural size. Native name Mur-ri-gang".
• The drawing is signed at lower right "T. Watling, delt.", but is undated.
• The drawing has been inscribed in ink at top right with the number "81.". 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 "Orange-winged Nuthatch. Syn Sup. ii 148". This has been copied in ink at bottom, "Orange winged Nuthatch very rare Lathams Syn Suppt ii. p. 146". The page reference is to Latham's Second Supplement to the General Synopsis of Birds (1802).
• This bird was more recently identified as the Orange-winged Sittella, Neositta chrysoptera in Hindwood K. A (1970). However, it appears in Smith and Wheeler's Art of the First Fleet (1988) as a Sittella Daphoenositta chrysoptera.
• The drawing is annotated in pencil at top "Lambert Drawing III. 6.". 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 attached to the mount alongside the drawing 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 12162
• James Lee of Kensington : purchased ; 1902
• Data sheet available
• Latham, John. Supplement II to the General Synopsis of Birds. London: Leigh, Sotheby, 1802. (Illustrated p. 146)
• 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 196, p. 182)