John Lewin

John Lewin planned to travel on HMS Buffalo for New South Wales in 1798 to record ornithological and entomological life for a British patron, Dru Drury.

Governor Macquarie, recognising the usefulness of a professional artist to his schemes for the colony, and to guarantee him an income, appointed him city coroner in 1810, and included him in the 1815 official inspection party of new lands discovered beyond the Blue Mountains.

[8] Macquarie also commissioned illustrations of plants collected by the surveyor-general, John Oxley, in his explorations of the country beyond Bathurst, the Liverpool Plains and New England.

[9] Although Lewin was made an Associate of the Linnean Society, he was not part of the scientific milieu which surround significant naturalists such as Robert Brown, Sir Joseph Banks, or Alan Cunningham.

Indeed, his interaction with Australian flora and fauna sharpened his eye and art: he moved from producing very conventional natural history illustrations in England to strongly composed images set in local context in Australia.

While he did not succeed as a publisher or printmaker, his large-scale natural history watercolours of exotic Australian plants and animals appear to have found a steady market.