Lewin had left London with paper, copper etching plates and ink, intending to publish books on Australian natural history. His supplies did not survive the voyage out, and in New South Wales he struggled with paper shortages and had to make his own ink. He was Australia’s first printmaker.

Lewin was one of a small number of professional artists in NSW during the first two decades of the nineteenth century. The majority were convicts, but the most competent artists — Lewin and surveyor George William Evans — were both free men. Each artist — convict and free — responded to the colony in different ways depending on their training, interests and their patrons’ requests. Few colonial artists made art for themselves, as a way of engaging with an idea or thinking about nature and landscape, like modern artists do. The output of colonial artists was very much driven by the needs of their patrons.

William Bligh, the governor of NSW between 1806 and his overthrow on 26 January 1808, was also a major patron of Lewin.  From landscapes to exotic natural history, many of them — like Gymea lily or the Variegated lizard — are large dramatic watercolours designed for framing and display. These images do not attempt to extensively record natural history; they celebrate the potential of the colony through the selective and elaborate depiction of its most extraordinary and curious flora and fauna.