British Colonial Art

Sources

Before 1600. Little British colonial art exists from the period of 1492 to 1600 in North America because there were few permanent settlements. Furthermore dissenters such as the Puritans had little need for art, building only the simplest buildings for religious worship. Not until after 1650 did English colonial art and architecture become visible.

White. An exception can be found in the work of John White, an English artist and cartographer who accompanied two expeditions to North America in 1585 and 1587. White, one of the first European traveler-artists in the Americas, executed some of the first visual representations of North America. His watercolor Map of the East Coast from Florida to Chesapeake Bay (1585) features the coat of arms of Sir Walter Raleigh, the expedition’s initiator. The map depicts the detailed coastline and ocean, six ships, plus fantastic fish. White executed additional watercolor maps, views of fortifications, as well as images of local flora and fauna. For example, one 1585 watercolor represents an exotic “flamenco,” or flamingo, bird. Other remarkable sketches depict indigenous villages, customs, and portraits. The European printmaker Theodor de Bry used White’s sketches as sources for print illustrations in several volumes of his ten-volume work on the Americas, the Great Voyages (1590-1618). White’s sketches provided European audiences with their first glimpses of native North American culture.

Sources

John Wilmerding, America Art (Harmondsworth, U.K. 6c New York: Penguin, 1976);

Hugh Honour, The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time (New York: Pantheon, 1975).