21/11/2011 Monday in Cairns, JCU

JCU Library 21/11/2011.

Review. European research trip 2011.
(Debrief with Academic Supervisor Asc Prof Stephen Naylor, 18/11/2011, Robyn Glade-White, 22/11/2011)

1. The research trip was "on-budget" and completed all major research elements as planned.
2. The most successful research elements were:
(a) the visit to London Natural History Museum for the primary source of Ferdinand Lucas Bauer paintings of marine animals from the Tropics (Queensland) and Tropical plants (Queensland, GOC) from the Mathew Flinders voyage of discovery to Australia 1801-1805.
(b) the visit to Paris National Natural history Museum for the primary source of Charles Alexandre Lesueur paintings of tropical marine animls (? Australia) from the Nicolas Baudin voyage of discovery to Australia 1801-1804.

3. The visits to the Le Havre and Vienna Natural History Museums archives of the Lesueur and Bauer drawings respectively and while germaine to the study, only limited access to these archives could be negociated. In both cases only one part-day was allowed for viewing. Obtaining images was also problematic and relatively expensive in the case of Vienna (30 Euro per photo-copy/scan compared to 0.6 Euro per scan in Paris).
In Le Havre security concerns made access to the Lesueur "velum" paintings impossible while periodic electrical black-outs in the drawings archive reduced the opportunity and photographic quality of the images I could obtain.

Note: In all museums the standard operating procedures/regulations for research allowed only a hand-held camera with no flash. This meant no long exposure times and using natural light only, consequently all images I took were relatively "dark" and required "Photo-shop" post-production to "salvage" them for the thesis. The scanned images provided by the Museums in Paris and Vienna were limited to a max of 300 dpi so were only low-medium resolution.

4. All images have now been downloaded into a minimum compression ".tiff" format and the brightness/contrast adjusted. Further post-production will be required prior to publication in the Thesis appendix but the images are now usable for comparision between artists and for re-joining paintings with their respective draft/drawing.
5. Video records of the trip have been downloaded/stored and will be processed at a later date when I have access to the Townsville Campus video laboratory software/expertese.

6. Subjectively I am very pleased with the quality of the images I have collected and that I have achieved my primary aim of "veiwing" the original sources of the scientific-illustration artwork produced on the 1801-1805 French and English voyages of discovery to "Terra Australis/New Holland". I feel honoured to have been able to see and hold the original paintings and drawings produced over 200 years ago during one of the first series of scientific investigations of Australia. I am indebted to and wish to acknowlege the assistance of all the librarians and curators in the variuos Museums that helped me on this research "quest".