Bankes, Thomas

Pacific voyages, European harbours and scenes of distant peoples fill the 1789 engravings of A New Royal Authentic and Compl...

Read more

Pacific voyages, European harbours and scenes of distant peoples fill the 1789 engravings of A New Royal Authentic and Complete System of Universal Geography, the work behind these prints credited to Thomas Bankes. The Reverend Bankes, vicar of Dixton in Monmouthshire, shared the credit for this collective compilation with Edward Warren Blake and Alexander Cook, though that does not make him the draughtsman or engraver of the plates. They range from globes and astronomy to the harbours of Amsterdam, Bordeaux and Marseille, and on to Tonga, Tahiti, Alaska and Kamchatka. Dress, dwellings, ceremonies and encounters with navigators show an eighteenth-century geography setting out to describe the world for British readers, and its historical episodes and ethnographic scenes carry the assumptions and classifications of their day.

Pacific voyages, European harbours and scenes of distant peoples fill the 1789 engravings of A New Royal Authentic and Complete System of Universal Geography, the work behind these prints credited to Thomas Bankes. The Reverend Bankes, vicar of Dixton in Monmouthshire, shared the credit for this collective compilation with Edward Warren Blake and Alexander Cook, though that does not make him the draughtsman or engraver of the plates. They range from globes and astronomy to the harbours of Amsterdam, Bordeaux and Marseille, and on to Tonga, Tahiti, Alaska and Kamchatka. Dress, dwellings, ceremonies and encounters with navigators show an eighteenth-century geography setting out to describe the world for British readers, and its historical episodes and ethnographic scenes carry the assumptions and classifications of their day.

Back to Top