Following up the "lost" William Westall 1801 artworks took me to Canberra, Australian National Library, Special Collections in 2016.
Just to recap the back-story: The Westall drawings were sent back to England on HMS Porpoise, which was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef. The artwork was subsequently salvaged and sent to Westalls' brother, a court painter, for refurbishment. These drawings did not come back to the Royal Navy, as did all the other works of Westall and Bauer, but became part of the Royal Colonial Society collection. This subsequently became the Royal Commonwealth Society, but their library collection was passed over to the Cambridge University Library about the time the new library building became available. On my 2015 study tour I arranged to visit the Library's special collections archive to view the cataloged "Four boxes of Westall drawings". When these were examined however there was no drawings but correspondence from and to the Australian National Library detailing the sale of the Westall drawings to them.
On return to Australia I arranged to travel to Canberra to finally view the drawings in the special Collections archive. Again this required authenticating my credentials/identity and registration as a researcher/reader to gain access. I was allowed to take photographs but the manuscripts had been digitized and were available on the web. I did however view the originals, as I had done for all the other artworks both English and French from the 1801-04 Voyages of Discovery to Australia. Figuratively I had "ticked the last box" for my data gathering field trip.
