First Fleet artwork collection

A bird standing on a rock, its body facing to the right with its head turned to the left, against a plain background. The bird is a golden brown colour with darker brown markings over its entire body . The tail is brown with darker stripes. 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 "This Bird measures from the top of the head to the end of the tail 22 inch & from the tip of one wing to the other 4 feet Iris doubtfull -" and in faded brown ink "A new Falcon".
• The drawing is unsigned and undated.
• The drawing is inscribed in ink at top right with the number "10.". 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 left "Radiated Falcon Syn Sup ii p 53". This has been copied in ink at bottom, "Radiated Falcon, Lathams Syn. Suppt. 2 p 53". The page reference is to Latham's Second Supplement to the General Synopsis of Birds (1802).
• This bird has more recently been identified as the Red Goshawk Erythrotriorchis radiatus in Hindwood K.A. (1970).
• The drawing is annotated in pencil at top left "Lambert Drawing I 38". 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.
• The drawing is annotated in ink on the reverse, but the edges of the text have been lost where the drawing has been cropped. The annotation is repeated on a separate sheet of paper attached to the mount below the drawing.
• A separate sheet attached to the mount below the drawing (measuring 21.9 x 8.4 cm.) is annotated in ink, "The Skin of this Bird I found nail'd up to a Settlers Hut, it is the only one of the kind ever seen - The Drawing is a faith- ful Copy - The settler who shot it says the Iris was Brown, and remarked that he never saw any Bird fly with such swiftness - Its Claws which were long small & sharp when he took it up, it drove quite thro' the end of his Finger - A new Falcon". It is also annotated in blue pencil at top right with the number "10".
• 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 12103
• 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 192, p. 180)