1st and only picture of Charles Darwin on the Beagle discovered at Sotheby's

PanARMENIAN.Net - A cartoon of Charles Darwin and the crew of the HMS Beagle – believed to be the only image of the great naturalist on the voyage that inspired his theory of evolution – is to be sold at auction in December, The Guardian reports.

The watercolour, painted while the Beagle was anchored off the Patagonian coast in 1832, shows fossils and botanical specimens being hauled aboard for examination by Darwin, who commands the centre of the painting in top hat and tails.

A speech bubble records him pontificating about an insect to an officer (thought to be ship’s surgeon Benjamin Bynoe): “Observe its legs are long, and the palpi are strongly toothed on the inner side,” he says. “I think the whole insect appears of a dark chestnut brown colour with a yellowish cast on the abdomen. Its history is but little known but there can be no doubt of its being of a predacious nature. What do you think Mr –?’

Darwin is flanked by 10 other crew members, all of whom also have their own speech bubbles, with words written in black ink: “Stand out of MY way!!! I’ve got specimens for the Captain!!!’, shouts a sailor, delivering said specimens to FitzRoy.The painting carries the the tongue-in-cheek title Quarter Deck of a Man of War on Diskivery of interesting Scenes on an Interesting Voyage, and is believed to have been painted to amuse the crew, who dismissed many of Darwin’s finds as “apparent rubbish”.

Because the picture doesn’t name either Darwin or the Beagle, and is not signed by the artist, it had escaped identification for most of its life, said Sotheby’s manuscript specialist Gabriel Heaton.

Its current owner had worked out that it must be by Augustus Earle, who was hired as shipboard artist by FitzRoy in October 1831, but had to quit the ship early due to ill health leaving only a couple of paintings of anteaters and some engravings to posterity, none of which featured Darwin. This limited time frame, and the correspondence of details in the picture to known facts about the voyage, allowed the watercolour to be dated “with a fair degree of confidence” to around 24 September 1832, when the Beagle anchored in the harbour of Bahía Blanca, 400 miles south of Buenos Aires, said Heaton.

While there, FitzRoy and Darwin took a launch to Punta Alta, 10 miles away, where discovered a treasure trove of fossils of extinct mammals.

FitzRoy recalled in his account of the expedition: “My friend’s [Darwin’s] attention was soon attracted to some low cliffs … where he found some of those huge fossil bones, described in his work; and notwithstanding our smiles at the cargoes of apparent rubbish which he frequently brought on board, he and his servant used their pickaxes in earnest, and brought away what have since proved to be most interesting and valuable remains of extinct animals …”

Earlier this month, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was voted the world’s most influential academic book, beating The Communist Manifesto and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in the public poll. “He is such an immensely important figure that there is huge interest both from private collectors and institutions,” said Heaton.

The painting will be sold at Sotheby’s in London on 15 December. Sotheby’s estimates it will fetch £50,000 to £70,000.