First Fleet Artist: George Raper's Birds and Plants of Australia. 2009. col. illus. 176 p. gr8vo. Hardcover.

George Raper was a midshipman on the Sirius of the First Fleet, whose talent and opportunity combined to produce what is now one of the National Library of Australias most treasured collections, the Ducie Collection of First Fleet Art. Rapers ability to observe and depict the captivating beauty of Australian birds and plants was heightened by his youthful enthusiasm for the novelty of what he witnessed. This telling of Rapers brief life presents a new dimension to our understanding of the First Fleet experience and story of how Rapers watercolours were only discovered in 2004 during a routine estate valuation in England, how they were attributed to Raper, and how being in storage for years had left their colours so vibrant. Containing full-colour illustrations of the complete Ducie Collection, this volume gives substance to the previously shadowy figure of Raper: a young man whose adventurous spirit and extraordinary insight into the natural world bequeathed to Australia through his paintings, a superlative legacy.