George French Angas 'startled by brilliancy' of South Australian nature he explored and illustrated from 1840s
Encounter Bay looking south, an 1844 watercolour on paper by George French Angas.
Image courtesy Art Gallery of South Australia
George French Angas, eldest son of prominent South Australian colony founder George Fife Angas, showed remarkable early talent in drawing and interest in natural history but was placed in a London business house by his father. After a brief stint there, he took up art lessons under English sculptor and artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins.
He left on a Europe tour and in 1842 published his Rambles in Malta and Sicily. Angas set sail again in 1843, this time for the new colony of South Australia. He immediately joined governor George Grey’s exploring expedition to the River Murray mouth and the Coorong and also headed southeast to Kangaroo Island and Port Lincoln.
He recorded the land, sea and Aboriginal inhabitants in watercolour, exhibiting the drawings in the Adelaide Legislative Council chamber in 1845. These later formed the basis of Angas’s 1847 South Australia Illustrated, a folio size edition of 60 hand-coloured lithographs. “Startled by the brilliancy of the climate, foliage, and other causes”, Angas illustrated the city of Adelaide, “Yankallillah (sic), the River Murray, Mount Schank, Port Adelaide, Coorung (sic), Mount Lofty, Klemsic (sic), Port Lincoln, Lyndoch Valley, Encounter Bay, Mount Gambier, Marble Range, Rapid Bay, Angaston, Kapunda, Currakalinga (sic) and many more”. Portraits of Aboriginal people were accompanied by colourful depictions of their implements, ornaments and utensils, and dances such as the Kuri and the Palti.
After a trip to New Zealand, Angas returned to South Australia in 1845 and travelled to Port Lincoln. After a short time in England, Angas in 1846 went to South Africa, where he spent two years in Natal and Cape working on drawings and watercolours. By 1849, he had produced another three books: The New Zealanders Illustrated, Savage life and scenes in South Australia and New Zealand and The Kafirs Illustrated.
In 1849, Angas married Roman Catholic Alisha Moran and they moved to South Australia where Angas’s father (strongly anti-Catholic) had settled two years before. Angas travelled to the goldfields near Bathurst and in 1851 produced two folios of hand-coloured lithographs of New South Wales and Victoria goldfields. In 1853, Angas was appointed secretary to the Australian Museum in Sydney, where he supervised the arranging and classifying the first collection of Australian specimens, particularly shells.
He returned to South Australia in 1860 and become chairman of Angaston district council until 1862. In 1863, he returned permanently to London with Alisha and their four daughters. In later life, Angas turned more towards natural history. He was an active in the Zoological Society and Linnean Society, contributing many papers, mostly on Australian shells.
He also produced a two late books: Australia: A popular account of its physical features, inhabitants and productions, with the history of its colonization (1865) and Polynesia: A popular description of the physical features, inhabitants, natural history and productions of the islands of the Pacific (1866).
