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Woreddy (aka Woureddy or Woorrady)

• Object type

  • drawing

• Museum number

  Oc2006,Drg.55

• Title (object)

  • Woreddy (aka Woureddy or Woorrady)

• Description

  Drawing; graphite and watercolour, from a collection of nineteen Thomas Bock portraits of Tasmanian Aboriginal people, held by the British Museum. It depicts Woreddy (aka Woureddy or Woorrady), a Tasmanian Aboriginal man from Bruny Island. He is wearing a neck-ornament and a skin garment over his right shoulder. He has scarification on his upper left arm, and has dressed hair and beard.

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• Producer name

  • Drawn by: Thomas Bock

• Ethnic name

  • Representation of Aboriginal Australian

• Date

  • 1831 (about October)

• Production place

  • Painted in: Hobart
  • (Oceania,Australia,Tasmania,Hobart)

• Materials

  • paper

• Technique

  • drawn

• Dimensions

  • Height: 24.4 centimetres
  • Width: 20.6 centimetres

• Inscriptions

  • • Inscription Type

      inscription

    • Inscription Content

      Woureddy, J.B. Davis Coll. F.D. (framed Drawing) No 4 (written on old mount).

    • Inscription Comment

      "4. Fine coloured drawing of “Woreddy”, [male symbol]. By T. Bock, of Hobartown, who made this series of drawings with very great care and exactness for G.A. Robinson, who was much displeased that Bock subsequently supplied Lady Franklin with copies of some of them." From MS145 'Catalogue of Drawings, Paintings & other objects of an Ethnological Nature', Royal Anthropological Institute Archive.

• Curator's comments

  In 1963 NJB Plomley published a paper which attempted to untangle the complex provenance of the different collections of Thomas Bock’s (1790-1855) portraits of Tasmanian Aboriginal people, including those held by the British Museum. The British Museum’s seventeen Bock portraits was acquired from Dr J Barnard Davis’ collection in 1883. Plomley (1963:15) argued that Davis acquired this set of portraits before 1867 from Thomas Bock’s son, Alfred Bock (1835-1920), and that they are copies of Thomas Bock’s work, executed by Alfred. However, based on a close study of the surviving documentation and its relationship to the inscriptions on many of the British Museum’s Bock portraits, it is clear that the British Museum’s collection of Bock portraits derive from a larger assemblage of prints, paintings and ethnographic objects collected by Robinson before his return to England in 1852, and which Barnard Davis purchased from GA Robinson’s widow in 1867. Davis’ descriptions of this material clearly identify the works as having been executed by Thomas Bock.The production date of 'about October 1831' derives from Plomley 1991:35.

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• Bibliography

  • Buscombe 1978
  • Plomley 1991
  • Plomley 1965

• Location

  Not on display

• Condition

  Window mounted, in good condition.

• Associated names

  • Representation of: Woorrady

• Associated places

  • Associated with: Tasmania
  • (Oceania,Australia,Tasmania)

• Acquisition name

  • Donated by: Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks
  • Previous owner/ex-collection: George Augustus Robinson
  • Previous owner/ex-collection: Dr Barnard Davis
  • Previous owner/ex-collection: Rose Robinson

• Acquisition notes

  This was probably part of the collection of artworks and ethnographic objects which Joseph Barnard Davis (q.v.) acquired from Robinson's widow in the 1860s, and which AW Franks (q.v.) later purchased for the British Museum at the auction sale of Davis's estate in 1883.

• Department

  Africa, Oceania & the Americas

• Registration number

  Oc2006,Drg.55

• Additional IDs

  • 4 (Davis Catalogue MS 145 RAI 1867)
  • Oc2006-Drg55-Boc