Two of the Natives of New Holland, Advancing to Combat

Etching of Two of the Natives, as published in 1773.

Two of the Natives of New Holland, Advancing to Combat is a drawing by Sydney Parkinson, drawn in 1770 and published posthumously as an etching by Thomas Chambers in the 1773 book A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas.[1][2] It is the earliest known portrayal of an Australian Aboriginal person by a European,[citation needed] and a typical example of a painting in the noble savage ideal, showing proud warriors advancing in defence of their land.[3] The stance of the warriors is said to be based upon the Borghese Gladiator.[4]

References

  1. ^ Smith, Bernard (1992). Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages. Yale University Press. pp. 91, 93. ISBN 978-0-300-05053-0.
  2. ^ Nugent, Maria (5 May 2009). Captain Cook Was Here. Cambridge University Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-521-76240-3.
  3. ^ Douglas, Bronwen (June 2003). "Seaborne Ethnography and the Natural History of Man". The Journal of Pacific History. 38 (1): 3–27. doi:10.1080/00223340306072. ISSN 0022-3344. S2CID 219627977. The episode is visually memorialised in an engraving by Thomas Chambers ennobling the two men 'as classical heroes' and published in Parkinson's posthumously edited Journal
  4. ^ McCann, Ben (2015). Framing French Culture. University of Adelaide Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-1-922064-87-5.