From Thomas Bewick to Botany Bay

This is the extraordinary story of a copper engraver turned felon who was transported to New South Wales in 1807, where he became one of the first engravers to depict the fledgling colony. The trail begins in Newcastle upon Tyne with Thomas Bewick, before he became widely acknowledged for his wood engravings. The Beilby & Bewick workshop had a reputation for copper engraving, that drew journeyman copper engravers seeking work from near and far. In 1789 one arrived under an assumed name and was probably from Germany. He gained occasional employment for a few years only to vanish and re-emerge in 1805 in Kent, over three hundred miles south. Convicted of theft under his real name, Philip Slager, he narrowly avoided the gallows and was transported to the penal colony of Botany Bay instead. Around 1812, having served his sentence, he commenced engraving some of the earliest views of Sydney and its surrounding districts, now considered iconic images of early Australia from the European perspective. Illustrated with all his surviving copper engravings, this is a tale of one convict's trials, tribulations and successes.