Boundless curiosity

A New World: England’s first view of America; Italian Prints 1875–1975

John White is one of the mysteries of English art. We don’t know exactly when he was born or died, we have no portrait of him and his name was a sufficiently common one to cause problems of identification in the surviving documents of the period. Yet we have an incomparable wealth of paintings by him, all 75 of which reside in the British Museum and which form the core and justification for this fascinating new exhibition. Being watercolours they are fragile, so get shown only once every 30 or 40 years. White was a gentleman adventurer who was also an artist, and between 1584 and 1590 he made five journeys to America. He was closely involved with these expeditions, investing his own money and making maps and records of the unfamiliar flora and fauna he observed, as well as the strange inhabitants of those shores. These paintings are of such crucial importance and interest to us because they represent England’s first sight of America. Appropriately, after their showing at the BM, they make the return journey to North Carolina and three other venues in the States.

White must have been an intrepid, hardy man, making so many long voyages under fairly primitive conditions, but evidently the spirit of adventure was strong in him. He had a boundless curiosity which informs all his work, and it also seems that he had a sense of humour. His native Americans are not drawn solemnly like museum specimens, but with an air of lived reality and an eye for the telling gesture or pose. Early in this treasure-chest of an exhibition are White’s imaginative watercolours of wild Pictish figures, wonderfully painted and tattooed, and rather modern-looking, except that they appear decidedly better-tempered than today’s urban warriors.