First Fleet artwork collection

View of the coastal city of Batavia from off-shore, with European ships at anchor and indigenous canoes in the foreground. The central ship flies a blue naval ensign with the Union Jack of Queen Anne, while the adjacent ships are flying the Dutch flag. They are surrounded by small canoes with spinaker sails, with a group of canoes without sails closer to the shore. The shore is heavily wooded to the right, coloured mottled grey-green and overlaid with palm trees drawn in a schematic style. To the left is the port and town, consisting predominantly of white buildings with blue-grey roofs and dominated by the blue-grey cupola of the church, and a yellow archway by the dockside. The sea is represented by a gradated wash of grey through pale yellow and pink to blue, overlaid with short grey horizontal brush marks in the foreground and brown patches representing the reflections of the ships. The sky occupies the upper two-thirds of the composition and is represented by a faint pink wash on the horizon, with washes of blue, pale yellow and grey around unpainted areas above. The drawing is framed with a thick black ink line and a triple-banded border, the central band of which is coloured with a pink wash and contains a title panel at bottom centre. The signature and date are located in the inner band at lower right.. Most of the outer band appears to have been lost through the drawing having been cropped.