Sydney Parkinson (abt. 1745 - 1771)

Born about 1745 in Edinburgh, Mid-Lothian, Scotland

Died 26 Jan 1771 at about age 26 in at sea, en-route to Cape Town

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Biography

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Sydney Parkinson (c. 1745 – 26 January 1771) was a Scottish Quaker, botanical illustrator and natural history artist.

Sydney was born in Edinburgh, the younger son of Joel Parkinson a brewer and Quaker. His mother was named Elizabeth^[1] His older brother, Stanfield Parkinson, published Sydney's work posthumously in 1773 in a book entitled A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas. He also had a sister named Britania.

Parkinson was employed by Joseph Banks to travel with him on James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific in 1768, in HMS Endeavour. Parkinson made nearly a thousand drawings of plants and animals collected by Banks and Daniel Solander on the voyage. He had to work in difficult conditions, living and working in a small cabin surrounded by hundreds of specimens. In Tahiti, he was plagued by swarms of flies which ate the paint as he worked. He died at sea on the way to Cape Town of dysentery contracted at Princes' Island off the western end of Java. ^[2]

Landing briefly in 1770, he was the first Quaker on Australian soil.^[3]

Sources

1. ↑ Parkinson, Sydney (1745-1771), Australian Dictionary of Biography.
2. ↑ wikipedia
3. ↑ Religious Society of Friends in Australia, About Quakers

See also:

• Rex Rienits, 'Parkinson, Sydney (1745–1771)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/parkinson-sydney-2537/text3445, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 4 July 2015.
• Sydney Parkinson, wikipedia article
• Parkinson, Sydney, 1745?-1771, “Sydney Parkinson, botanical draughtsman,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage, accessed July 3, 2015, http://otago.ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/7583.