Australian Dictionary of Biography

Sydney Parkinson (1745-1771), by James Newton

National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an9800893

Sydney Parkinson (1745?-1771), natural history draughtsman, was born in Edinburgh, the younger of two sons of Joel Parkinson, a brewer and a Quaker. Although apprenticed to a wool draper, Parkinson's preference was for botanical drawing at which he showed great skill. About 1767 he went to London and was employed by Joseph Banks for whom he did some outstanding work; in 1768, when Banks formed his suite of 'scientific gentlemen' to accompany James Cook to the South Seas in the Endeavour, Parkinson went as botanical draughtsman. The death at Tahiti of Alexander Buchan, the topographical draughtsman, threw a heavy extra burden on Parkinson, but he bore it well and ably. During the voyage he made at least 1300 drawings or sketches, and compiled vocabularies of the natives of Tahiti and New Holland. On the way home, when the Endeavour called at Batavia for repairs, Parkinson was one of many who contracted dysentery, and he died at sea on 26 January 1771. In England later that year a dispute arose between Banks and Parkinson's brother, Stanfield. Banks had paid the latter £500 for balance of salary due and for Parkinson's papers and drawings. The papers were later lent to Stanfield Parkinson, who contrary to agreement had them transcribed for publication and was restrained by an injunction from doing so until the official account of the voyage had appeared. His book was published later in the same year, 1773, entitled A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, with a second enlarged edition in 1784. A result of the squabble was that although Hawkesworth, who edited the official account of the voyage, used Parkinson's papers and drawings freely he did not acknowledge them. Only two of Parkinson's illustrations in these books are of Australian subjects. His own contains a study of the two Aboriginals who opposed Cook at Botany Bay, and Hawkesworth has a view of the Endeavour River (Cooktown, Queensland). A third of a kangaroo, formerly attributed to Parkinson, is now known to have been from a painting by George Stubbs.

Parkinson was the first European artist to set foot on Australian soil, to draw an authentic Australian landscape, and to portray Aboriginals from direct observation. A great quantity of his work survives. The British Museum has eighteen volumes of his plant drawings, of which eight, comprising 243 drawings, are of Australian plants, three volumes of zoological subjects, of which a few sketches relate to Australia, and many of his landscape and other drawings, mainly of Tahitian and New Zealand subjects. Parkinson was gentle, able and conscientious, noted, according to his brother, for 'his singular simplicity of conduct, his sincere regard for truth [and] his ardent thirst after knowledge'. Two portraits are known: a small head in oils in the British Museum (Natural History) and the engraved frontispiece to his Voyage.