Across The Eastern Archipelago

The sketches and paintings of Thomas Baines (1820-1875) provide a remarkable visual record of his travels in Southern Africa and Australasia.

Baines sketched a wide range of subjects during the RGS-sponsored North Australian Expedition (1855-57), some of which he worked up in oils. As well as landscapes, natural history specimens and coastal views, his subjects included numerous portraits.

The Australian portraits tend to represent Aboriginal people as either instruments or obstacles to the expedition (as in the pair of oil paintings where they are shown as either ‘friendly’ or ‘hostile’). However, the portraits he sketched in the Malay Straits offer more subtle images of encounter and exchang, notably those of Ismaiel Bin Mohamed, an Arab captain, and Mrs Drysdale, a woman of European and Chinese ancestry

His paintings, notably the ‘Malay native from Batavia’, convey a strong sense of individuality: from evidence in Baines’ journals, we can identify him as Mohammed Jen Jamain, a former police magistrate at Kupang, and also the subject of a signed watercolour in Baines' sketch-book.

Note
Additional work by Thomas Baines can be found on the 3rd screen of the Gallery.