• Title
  Item 01: Echidna Australian egg-laying monotramataus mammal. Porcupine ant-eater, 1807 / by I.W. Lewin
• Call number
  SAFE/PXD 942/1
  
• Level of description
  series
• Date
  
  1807
• Type of material
  Graphic Materials, Drawings
• Reference code
  430516
• Issue Copy
  Digitised
• Physical Description
  1 drawing - watercolour and pencil - 21.2 x 29.4 cm sight
  
• Access Conditions
  
  Access via appointment
• Copying Conditions
  Out of copyright: Artist died before 1955
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• General note
  
  From Curator's acquisition notes, June 2003:
  Governor William Bligh appears to have commissioned a number of natural history watercolours from Lewin.
  This watercolour is one of the earliest known Australian drawings of an echidna. Many years earlier George Shaw, in his "Naturalists Miscellany" (London, 1792) had named and illustrated (pl. 109) the echidna as a Porcupine ant-eater. The illustration in Shaw and Lewin's drawing are reasonably similar, particularly in the unusual treatment of the tail, which could imply that Lewin was working as much from the illustration in Shaw as from life.
  Digital order no:Album ID : 879112
• Signatures / Inscriptions
  
  Titled from a twentieth century inscription on the reverse of a now discarded modern backing, which was probably copied from a now lost original title.
  Signed at lower right "IWLewin. A.L.S. Oct.r 24th 1807 / New South Wales"
• Creator/Author/Artist
  Lewin, J. W. (John William), 1770-1819
  
• Topic
  Tachyglossidae.
  natural history illustrations
  
• Exhibited in
  
  Politics & Power: Bligh's Sydney Rebellion 1808 - State Library of New South Wales (21 January - 27 April, 2008)
  Lewin: Wild Art - State Library of New South Wales (March, 2012 - October, 2012)
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE1123643

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