John Lewin - Legacy

Legacy

His background as a natural history artist made Lewin an acute observer of the reality of the Australian landscape and its fauna and flora: critic Robert Hughes comments that he was the first to record the distinct 'look' of Australia without being blinded by European art conventions, and according to art historian Bernard Smith, "Lewin grasped the nature of the eucalyptus, its light translucent foliage through which the horizon may be seen, and the nature of the slender and feathery grasses of the interior. He succeeded, too, in portraying an authentic bush atmosphere."

Walter Wilson Froggatt stated in his memoir of Lewin:"he collected the insects in all stages of development, studied their life histories, noted their food plants, and made accurate coloured drawings from the living insects".

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. Rather his training was that of a practical collector and artisan. He found it difficult to write about science - indeed his own text for Birds of New South Wales is naive and simple. Rather he excelled as an observer, and although never a great natural history artist, brought to his own work a keen sense of observation and design. 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 appears to have found a steady market. He also seems to have had ambitions to be considered a professional artist, as opposed to simply an illustrator: he noted in 1812 that he had painted a 15 x 18 foot image of a corroboree. Lewin appears to have permanently settled in Australia, where he was one of the few professional artists, a fact from which he gained socially and professionally.