Vienna
Tuesday, 11/10/2011
Morning. The sky is heavily overcast but it is not actually raining at the moment, and my cold/flu is under control so I am at least operational. I checked the CNN Europe weather report last night and a cold snap ("from summer to late autumn/winter") occurred over all Europe about the time I left Belgium. I am not the only one that got caught in the rain!
Not quite enough time to visit another museum before my appointment so I worked on my research documents instead. I am not sure how to handle the Natural History Museum appointment, because I do not know what I will be shown. I went through the tropical fish paintings from London and hopefully can match some of these with the Vienna work, a la Lesueur's painting and sketches. All I can do is put together a general database to enter whatever I do get. I can order images, hopefully similar to the Paris arrangement and that will be my research record. My aim is to see the original artwork from the 1801-04 voyage of discovery and that I can do.
Come 10.30 I took a double dose of paracetamol and was on my way, held up a bit at the Ubahn Station but arrived at the NHM close to the alotted 11'oc. I found the coach entrance and met the man who was to escort me upstairs. By this stage it was about 11.10. We went upstairs for the formal introductions with Prof Riedl-Dorn and staff. I had just begun the mandatory visitors paperwork (I had brought copies of my documents/authorisation with me for this pupose), when a fire-drill was sounded and we all filed down into the quadrangle. About 11.45 before I saw my first drawing. These were mainly plants and lizards but when I requested to see his fish drawings then the project started looking good. We went through about 4 large format boxes of drawings, in superb condition. High detail with taxonomic accuracy, but unfortunately in relatively light pencil. The lack of contrast was going to be a problem for any camera/scanner. I located about 24 drawings of fish species that I would have liked to have images of (digital scans). However this was where the price became a difficulty.
The professor gave me a "student rate" chosen from the official scale of charges but this was still 30 Euro per copy. (On the understanding that these would be used for educational not commercial purposes). An alternative reading of the price list would have been over 200 euro per image! I stripped my wish-list back to 5 essential images, which worked out as 150 Euro or about A$190.
We worked until just before 5.00 o'c but by then I was coughing and wheezing so I called it quits. I was actually pleased I had made until then. Like at Le Havre I got what I needed but not all that I wanted. What I did get was to view a large body of Ferdinand Bauer's 1801-04 Australian images, including parallel fish images with Lesueur, which was actually the aim of this part of research field-work.
I also remembered to get video of the Natural History Museum and of the archive/research laboratory. The camera battery ran out at the last couple of frames but I had bought a spare so I could close down the camera properly.
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