by Dr Harriet Hawkins AHRC Research Fellow, School of Geography, University of Exeter
‘A combination of the artist and the man of science is rare’ wrote Sir Arthur Shipley F.R.S. of the explorer Dr Edward Wilson, a talented artist and scientist, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and member of Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition. However, as Shipley goes onto acknowledge, the combination is maybe ‘not as rare as one is apt to think’. Wilson, a skilled scientist and accomplished artist, who made studies of the work of John Ruskin and J.W.M. Turner, was one of a number of ‘travelling artists’ who accompanied explorers, as well as other seaman, surveyors and geographers who developed their own artistic practices of varying kinds. Continue reading