Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

Liverpool, England, UK

Biography

natural history artist, illustrator, lithographer, naturalist and commissary, was born in Liverpool, England, on 8 October 1789, eldest surviving son of John Timothy Swainson, a customs officer, and his second wife Frances, née Stanway. William served in the British Army’s Commissariat Department in Malta (1807) and Sicily (1808-15) and attained the rank of assistant commissary-general. Swainson collected and sketched the indigenous plants and animals of virtually every place he visited, making extensive collections (especially of fish) in Sicily. Retiring from the army on half-pay in 1814, he began pursuing his interest in natural history more seriously. He joined an Austrian scientific expedition to South America in 1817-18 but, receiving little encouragement, prepared only a brief note of his travels on his return. In 1828, according to Platts, he spent six months making sketches in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, then came back to London and taught himself lithography in order to make his own illustrations for his book, The Birds of Brazil and Mexico . The lithographs in his two volumes (finally published in London in 1834-35) were of fine quality and technically important pioneer efforts, but publication had been so long delayed that the book’s contents had been superseded. Largely from financial necessity, Swainson published prolifically in the 1820s and 1830s, including contributing the sections on farm and garden pests to John Claudius Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Agriculture (4th edn, London 1839) and Encyclopaedia of Gardening (new edn, London 1834). He always provided all his own illustrations. After suffering financial losses and the death of his wife Mary, née Parkes, whom he had married in 1823, Swainson migrated to New Zealand with his five children and his second wife Ann, née Grasby, in 1837. He arrived at Wellington in the James in 1841 and was granted land on the Hutt River which he farmed and where he continued to collect and sketch. He had a broad knowledge of botany and zoology and a wide circle of scientific acquaintances. His five volumes of correspondence (Linnaean Society, London) include letters from Sir Joseph Banks, who nominated him for election as a fellow of the Royal Society; from Allan and Richard Cunningham, the Sydney botanists; from John Gould and from the Sydney collectors Alexander and William Sharp Macleay. According to Nora McMillan in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography , it was Swainson’s pertinacious adherence to W.S. Macleay’s absurdly convoluted 'quinary system’ of classification which resulted in his scientific work being largely dismissed. On 11 September 1840 Swainson wrote to the British Museum offering to sell his plant collections, but the museum declined the offer. In 1850 Swainson (called 'the “Quinarian” of New Zealand’) was invited to Australia to carry out surveys of timber trees for the Victorian and Tasmanian governments. Travelling extensively, he stayed approximately eighteen months in each colony. A paper he delivered at Hobart Town was published in the Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Van Diemen’s Land , vol. 3, and appears to have been politely received but, according to Michael Hoare, his Victorian Botanical Report (1853) was a disaster. Australian sketches by Swainson were made both in watercolour and pencil, the majority being finely worked pencil drawings. Some, such as Bealby’s Range, near Dandenong, Port Phillip (1853, TMAG), have white highlights. They are usually inscribed with place and date, making it possible to trace his whereabouts with accuracy, eg Spotted Gum, Ferntree Valley, Port Phillip, 10th May, 1853 (p.c.). Several public institutions hold examples. There is a small collection of sketches of Tasmanian ( In the Public Gardens, Port Arthur ), New South Wales ( Melia azadaric—Parramatta Bridge 1850) and New Zealand subjects in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Another set of pencil views of New South Wales and Tasmanian subjects (1853-54) is in the Mitchell Library, and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew holds ten pencil sketches of Australasian, chiefly New Zealand, trees (1847-52). The Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, has the major holding of his Australasian drawings, again primarily of New Zealand subjects. Nobbie [sic] Island, Newcastle, Australia , two views of Australian trees at Port Phillip dated 1853 and other Australian drawings, including a view of the Scott family’s barn on Ash Island, near Newcastle (see Helena and Harriet Scott ), were sold in 1979-80. Numerous scientific papers are listed in the Royal Society’s Catalogue . Swainson returned to New Zealand from Australia in 1854. He died on his property, Fern Grove, in the Hutt Valley, on 7 December 1855, survived by his second wife, their three daughters and the four sons of his first marriage. McMillan considers that 'His botanical work is unimportant; his claim to remembrance rests upon his zoological work and upon his fine zoological illustrations’. Writers: Staff Writer Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 8 October 1789

Summary

Natural history artist, illustrator, lithographer, naturalist and commissary. McMillan considers that 'His botanical work is unimportant; his claim to remembrance rests upon his zoological work and upon his fine zoological illustrations'.

Gender

Male

Died

7 December 1855

Age at death

66