In the late eighteenth century the Earl of Charlemont acquired a mysterious album of watercolours, filled with curious images of the flora, fauna and people of a distant land. Some fifty years later, his descendants put it up for auction at Sotheby’s. There was a fire at the warehouse in which it was stored pending the sale, as a result of which the book’s spine was singed and several of its pages damaged by water from firemen’s hoses. But the volume survived, slightly the worse for wear, and was eventually purchased by the British Museum .
It turned out to be a rare and extraordinary treasure. What it contained was the collected work of one of the very first English watercolourists, John White, who was not only an accomplished artist and student of the natural world, but also happened to be one of the first gentlemen-adventurers. A friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, he made several voyages to the New World . The multitude of images in the battered book acquired by the British Museum include a remarkable group of pictures of the natives of North America whom White saw on his voyages. They are the earliest surviving documents of the encounter between Europeans and native Americans, in this case the Algonquians of North Carolina. But because of their extreme fragility, they are only placed on public display once every thirty or forty years. So “A New World:
Little is known about John White outside of his activities as draftsman and colonist during his trips to the New World ....
