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Robert Westmacott and Crimean archaeology

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Life & Times | Art - Lithographs | Art - Sketchbooks | Crimean archaeology 1855-6 | Mauritius & South Africa 1825-8 | South America 1851 & 1858 | New Zealand 1840 Illawarra's Indiana Jones The Crimean War adventures of Lt. Col. Robert Marsh Westmacott FGS FRGS The Indiana Jones movies (1981-2023) are iconic representations of the long-held Western tradition whereby a lone archaeologist seeks out ancient treasures from distant lands and brings them "home" to museums and galleries for display and "protection" from grave robbers and mercenary charlatans like themselves. As we look back in time, and proclaim harsh judgement on such activities, the irony here is profound. But let us not slip into that modern default. Rather than looking through a glass darkly, in travelling back to the past we should seek to become au fait with who such adventurers were, and why they did what they did; not layer that past with w...
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Robert Marsh Westmacott - New Zealand circa 1840

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Life & Times | Art - Lithographs | Art - Sketchbooks | Crimean archaeology 1855-6 | Mauritius & South Africa 1825-8 | South America 1851 & 1858 | New Zealand 1840   Captain Robert Marsh Westmacott   New Zealand /  Aotearoa  Drawing Book c.1840   One of the Hill Chiefs, N.Z. National Library of Australia, Westmacott's Drawing Book , NK762/41. Possibly an original work by R.A. Oliver.    I ntroduction In 1929 the Museum Book Store, London, offered for sale a collection of drawings attributed to Englishman Robert Marsh Westmacott (1801-1870). Westmacott's Drawing Book c.1840 contained sixteen topographic views and figure studies of New Zealand - known as  Aotearoa in the local Maori language -  from the early colonial period. The compilation of such an album, comprising prints, watercolours, pencil sketches and text, was a popular pastime amongst men and women of taste and travellers in search of th...
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