STONE (Sarah).

Wax Bill: Loxia Astrild]

      - [with] [Lyre Bird?]. Two watercolours. 450 by 315mm & 430 by 300mm. Both images foxed & washed. The Waxbill signed & dated, 1782. Loxia astrild is also known as the orange cheeked waxbill and is found both in Africa and America. The other unidentified image is a variety of lyre bird. One of the foremost naturalist painters of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Sarah Stone was hired by Sir Ashton Lever to record his extensive collections between 1781 and 1785. In addition to his aviary of 4000 birds, Sir Ashton's collections included many of the specimens collected on Cook's Third Voyage, and her drawings are often the only surviving record of these items. When the Leverian Museum was dispersed by lottery in 1784 the drawings by Miss Stone were exempted from the sale. Sarah Stone also provided the illustrations for John White's Journal to New South Wales,the first work to illustrate natural history from the colony, and Latham's Synopsis of Birds. She exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1780, and at the Royal Academy in 1781 when she showed three watercolours of birds and one of shells.