Sarah Stone

This ground-breaking new series brings to light, often for the first time, the artistically and scientifically fascinating painting and drawing collections of The Natural History Museum, London. Each book introduces, with splendid colour plates and a readable and scholarly commentary, pioneer artists whose names have until now been undeservedly little known.

From about 1777 the talented watercolourist Sarah Stone (ca. 1760-1844) was employed by the entrepreneur Sir Ashton Lever to record the contents of his extraordinary private museum. This consisted of specimens and ethnographic material being brought back by British expeditions to Australia, the Americas, Africa and the Far East in the 1780s and 1790s -- most importantly from Cook's round-the-world voyages. Her meticulous and fascinating paintings provide a unique record of the discoveries made by sailors and naturalists on board survey ships and in the new colonies during these early explorations.

The Lever Museum was tragically dispersed in 1806, and most of its zoological specimens have been lost. Apart from their artistic interest, Sarah Stone's paintings provide an important record of specimens used by naturalists in the age of Linnaeus for their descriptions of new species (some now extinct). Though now little known, the Lever Museum was a major feature of the fashionable culture of eighteenth-century London and its story is here told for the first time. Besides the 60 charming, unique and impressive plates chosen for colour reproduction, more than 900 paintings by Sarah Stone are surveyed.