"Artist, naturalist, romantic traveller George French Angas (1822-1886) spent 18 months sketching and observing in Australia and New Zealand between 1844 and 1845. It was a period of decisive and irresistible cultural change. The young Angas excelled at capturing the minute detail of plants and people, objects and landscapes, and rapidly assembled a portfolio of 250 watercolours. In this ... volume, Philip Jones has used Angas' sketches, watercolours, lithographs and journal accounts to retrace his Antipodean journeys in vivid detail. Set in the context of his time, Angas emerges both as a brilliant artist and as a flawed Romantic idealist, rebelling against his father's mercantilism while entirely reliant on the colonial project enabling him to depict indigenous peoples and their ways of life."--Back cover.