Old new world

This spring sees two major anniversaries in the colonial history of Europe: Britain is commemorating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of its until then lucrative but cruel slave trade, and the US marks the 400th anniversary of the first permanent European settlement in Jamestown. The British Museum is also showing a collection of paintings and illustrations it holds, which represent the first influential glimpse of America — its flora, fauna and people — Britons had in the late sixteenth century. Britain was a relative latecomer to American exploration, but under Elizabeth I, major efforts were made. And these expeditions invariably included crew to draw exotic new finds. Sir Walter Raleigh was keenly interested in the land he called Virginia (present day North Carolina), as he was eager to discover valuable minerals and other commodities, a safe haven from which to harass Spanish ships and a place to establish a permanent foothold in America. On board an early expedition was the artist John White. Very little is known about White, whose unique art is central to the perspectiveshifting exhibition at the British Museum. Born in the 1540s, he crossed the Atlantic, tried to live as a colonist on the edge of an unknown continent, even became governor of a doomed outpost. White may have been on board the key vessel in Britain’s search for a northwest passage and he was the first English artist to draw the wildlife encountered on Baffin Island. John White’s art offers a glimpse of the experience of being on an Elizabethan ship as it approaches the Americas, seeing the sea life become more and more unfamiliar. In the water floated gigantic jellyfish with a translucent, veined, pinkish bodies so like a ship the sailors named it a Portuguese man-o-war. Then there is the ‘flying fishe’ — as written by White — which he portrays. Finally, the ship makes landfall among the islands of a great bay — today’s Chesapeake — where loggerhead turtles and new species of butterfly impress the English adventurers. White was sent to produce visual records and maps of what he found in order to encourage future investment and colonists for an ‘English plantation’. White also painted detailed scenes of the complex and