Collections

See the world through the eyes of natural history artists and explorers, who recorded nature both from the British Isles and from all over the world, as Western explorers first saw it.

The images shown here are selected from the Museum’s important collections of natural history art from the 18th and 19th centuries.

India collection

Explore artwork depicting the wonderful diversity of India’s plants and animals from the mid-1700s onwards. Such painstaking observation of the natural world played an important part in the success of one of the world’s first corporations - the British East India Company.
First Fleet collection

View fascinating drawings of Australia’s people, wildlife and landscape as seen by artists of the First Fleet that arrived in 1788 to establish the first British colony. Look beyond the images at the untold story of the Aboriginal people who already lived there.
John Reeves collection

Discover the exquisitely beautiful and scientifically important botanical and zoological paintings commissioned by Reeves while in China (1812-1831).
MacGillivray art collection

Marvel at William MacGillivray's gallery of over 200 watercolour paintings depicting British birds, fish and mammals (1796-1851).
Endeavour botanical illustrations

Botanical drawings from Captain Cook’s HMS Endeavour (1768-1771), the first voyage devoted to scientific discovery.
Art themes

Explore the many themes, including Natural Wonders and Caught in Oils, that represent the different aspects of the art collections.