“A New World: England’s First View of America,” a British Museum exhibition of the first English record of the New World is now on display at Jamestown Settlement in Williamsburg, Virginia.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a collection of watercolors and drawings by John White, the Elizabethan gentleman-artist most responsible for shaping England’s first view of America and its inhabitants. In 1585, White sailed with the earliest expedition to “Virginia” (on the coast of present-day North Carolina) and produced a series of watercolors that documented his voyage.
These drawings of the region’s Algonquian Indians and local flora and fauna constitute the only surviving original visual record of England’s first settlement in North America. The exhibition A New World: England’s First View of America will feature nearly one hundred works, including all of White’s drawings of the Algonquian Indians; his maps and charts; watercolors of the Inuit; North American and West Indian plants and animals; depictions of ancient Britons; and associated works by his contemporaries.
A companion lecture series will feature guest speakers at 7 p.m. on July 19, Aug. 9 and Sept. 20.
English interest in establishing a settlement in North America only emerged toward the end of the sixteenth century. In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh received a patent from Queen Elizabeth I to finance and settle a colony in “Virginia.” Raleigh hoped to find minerals and other valuable commodities, to establish a safe harbor from which to harass Spanish ships, and to create a permanent foothold for England in America. He sent an expedition in 1585 that included John White and the renowned scientist, Thomas Harriot (1560– 1621). Together, they produced drawings, maps, and written records of what they found to satisfy curiosity about the New World, to encourage further investors, and to attract colonists for an English “plantation.”
Upon arrival, the Englishmen explored the coastline and built a small fort on the island of Roanoke. White depicted the native people and their way of life in a series of spectacular watercolors of the Indians and their villages of Pomeiooc, Secotan, and Roanoke. He also produced drawings of local animals and plants, portraying for the first time many species native to the New World.
John White returned from “Virginia” a year later, he and Raleigh made plans for a permanent colony of one hundred and fifteen men, women, and children at the “Cittie of Raleigh” on the Chesapeake. White was appointed Governor with twelve assistants. The expedition set off in 1587 but landed at Roanoke with insufficient supplies. White was sent home to obtain assistance but his relief ships were denied permission to sail due to the presence of the Spanish Armada, When he finally returned in 1590 the colonists had disappeared and the legend of the “Lost Colony of Roanoke” was born.
Jamestown, America’s first permanent English colony, was established 17 years later, about 100 miles away. White’s depictions of the Algonquian-speaking people of the region have been an important resource in the development of Jamestown Settlement’s gallery exhibits and outdoor re-created Powhatan Indian village.
Scenes from other parts of the Americas and depictions of peoples of the world also are among the more than 70 White drawings in the exhibition.
White’s work is widely known through adaptations by other artists, especially Theodor de Bry, whose engravings after White’s watercolors illustrate a 1590 edition of Thomas Harriot’s “A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia.”
All of White’s drawings are in the British Museum’s collection and are on public display as an entire group for the first time in more than 40 years. “A New World: England’s First View of America” debuted at the British Museum in March 2007 and traveled to the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, N.C., and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Conn., before concluding at Jamestown Settlement.
The exhibition includes a five-minute video, On the Traces of Pocahontas, showing modern descendants of the Algonquians depicted by John White visiting the British Museum Print Room in London in 2006. They view the drawings and reflect upon their importance to their own history.
The companion lecture series begins this Saturday, July 19 with Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Professor of History at New York University, speaking on “Roanoke’s Achievement.” Daniel K. Richter, Richard S. Dunn Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak on August 9 on “Tassentasse in Tsenacomoco: Native People and the English, 1560-1622.” The lecture series concludes with Karen Hearn, Curator of 16th- and 17th-Century British Art at Tate Britain, speaking September 20 on “Painting in Elizabethan England: John White in Context.” Advance reservations are recommended for the free evening lectures by contacting (757) 253-4415 or rsvp.lecture@jyf.virginia.gov.
An illustrated catalogue, published by the University of North Carolina Press, reproduces in full the celebrated but rarely seen British Museum collection of watercolors by John White. An introduction is followed by chapters on John White and on the indigenous inhabitants and their historical context. The book explores White’s various roles as colonist, surveyor, and artist who recorded the natural history of the region and also provided Elizabethan England with its first glimpse of a now lost Native American culture.
“A New World: England’s First View of America,” will be on view at the Jamestown Settlement in Williamsburg, Virginia from July 15 through October 15, 2008. For more information, call (888) 593-4682 toll-free or (757) 253-4838 or visit www.historyisfun.org.
