drawing; album (?) | British Museum

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drawing; album(?)

Object Type: drawing; album (?)
Museum number: SL,5270.11
Description: Kalicho, an Inuk from Frobisher Bay, leaf from a volume (now consisting of 113 leaves of drawings), after John White; standing to front and looking to right, wearing a sealskin jacket with hood and tail, holding a bow and paddle Watercolour, with pen and grey ink Verso: Arnaq and Nutaaq, Inuit from Frobisher Bay; wearing a sealskin jacket with hood and tail and long boots, the child visible in her hood Watercolour, with pen and grey ink
Producer name
School/style: British; American
Production date: 1585-1593
Materials
Technique
Dimensions: Height: 390 millimetres; Width: 260 millimetres
$Inscriptions
Curator's comments: For the album from which these come, see curatorial comment for BM SL-5270.1. They are versions of watercolours by John White for which see 1906,0509.1.29 and 30. For a discussion of the various versions of the five watercolours of Inuit associated with John White, see the discussion on pp. 164-65 of K. Sloan, A New World, 2007. Since that was published (it includes an article by C Feest on historical images of native people, including the Inuit on pp. 71-2) a new image associated with these images by White has been discovered in Merckliche Beschreibung sampt eygenlicher Abbildung eynes frembden unbekanten Volks... (1578, copy in Zurich Zentralbibliothek) which includes a description of Frobishers 3rd trip and an image very close to these Sloane album images - the woodcut includes the male and female figures from the front and an image of a third figure in a kayak behind them. Either these images in the John White Sloane album were the originals of the woodcut figures (unlikely) or these Sloane album images of Inuit are based on this woodcut.
Bibliographic references: Croft-Murray 1960 / Catalogue of British Drawings in the British Museum, XVI and XVII centuries (78(11)); Hulton & Quinn 1964 / The American Drawings of John White 1577-1590, with drawings of European and Oriental subjects (114(b)); Binyon 1898-1907 / Catalogue of drawings by British artists, and artists of foreign origin working in Great Britain (3(11)); Coe 1977 / Sacred Circles: Two Thousand Years of North American Indian Art (p. 235, 675); Bate & Thornton 2012 / Shakespeare: Staging the World (p. 243; p. 244, fig. 14; p. 294); Sloan 2007 / A New World. England's first view of America (pp.164-69)
Location: Not on display
Exhibition history: 1976/7 7 Oct-16 Jan, The Hayward Gallery, London 1977 16 Apr-19 Jun, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, USA; Sacred Circles: 2,000 Years of North American Indian Art 2007 Mar-Jun, BM, 'A New World:...' 2007/8 Oct-Jan, Raleigh, North Carolina Mus of History, 'A New World:...' 2008 Mar-Jun, New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, 'A New World:...' 2008 Jul-Oct, Williamsburg, Jamestown Settlement, 'A New World:...' 2012 London, BM, Shakespeare 2020-2021 October-Feb, London, BM, Arctic: culture and climate
Subjects
Associated places: Associated with: Frobisher Bay
Associated ethnic name
Acquisition name: Transferred from: British Library; Bequeathed by: Sir Hans Sloane
Acquisition date: 1753
Acquisition notes: See Acq.Hist in BM SL-5270.1. Transferred from the Department of Manuscripts.
Department: Prints and Drawings
Registration number: SL,5270.11
Conservation: Treatment: 07 Mar 2007; Treatment: 06 Mar 2007

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