'New scenes drawn by the pencil of Truth': Joseph Banks' northern voyage

In July 1772, the noted naturalist Joseph Banks embarked on an expedition to Iceland, by way of the Western Isles of Scotland on the outward voyage and the Orkneys on the return. This paper explores the roles of drawing in the production and circulation of knowledge during and in the aftermath of Banks' travels, with a particular focus on the depiction of the varied landscapes encountered and recorded. Drawings produced by Banks' draftsmen, John Cleveley and the brothers James and John Frederick Miller, together with the written accounts of others in the party, chart the physical and human geography of the places where the voyagers made landfall on this 'Northern Journey' as well as their rich cultural associations. These landscapes and their plants, peoples and structures, whether man-made or natural, were read or appreciated in various ways, not only as objects of aesthetic apprehension but terrains of philosophical and historical enquiry. This material is revealing not only of the way the islands of far north prompted enlightened enquiry but how they were, in turn, seen to be animated by the speculation they occasioned.