Artist Alexander Buchan

He is known for his participation in the 1768–1771 first voyage of James Cook aboard HMS Endeavour, where he was one of the artists in the entourage of botanist Joseph Banks. Buchan had epilepsy. On the journey, he had two documented seizures, the first during an expedition in Tierra del Fuego. Buchan died after the second seizure, shortly after Endeavour's arrival at Tahiti, and was buried at sea. Buchan produced landscapes, coastal views, ethnographic drawings and natural history drawings. He is best known for illustrations of the people of Tierra del Fuego, some of which were engraved for publication in accounts of the voyage. All of his drawings from the voyage were taken by his employer Joseph Banks and are now in the British Library and the Natural History Museum, London.

Alexander Buchan
Oil painting showing Alexander Buchan, possibly a self portrait
Died	17 April 1769 Matavai Bay, Tahiti
Known for	landscape and ethnographic art from the first voyage of James Cook
Patron(s)	Joseph Banks

Nothing is known about the early life of Buchan, but he was described as having been "young" when he was hired by Joseph Banks to go on the first voyage of James Cook. According to Averil Lysaght, an expert on Banks, there is no evidence that Buchan exhibited work in London, but Banks, who had many Scottish contacts, could have heard about Buchan's ethnographically precise and unromantic work through one of them. However, Lysaght found no direct evidence for a connection of Buchan with either Banks' Scottish friends or with the Buchan family of North Berwick, Scotland. It is unclear whether Banks knew that Buchan was an epileptic before the start of his employment. It is also not known how Buchan learned to draw. According to the art historian Bernard Smith, Buchan was not academically trained in figure drawing, but had likely learned through self-study by making copies of engravings. An oil painting showing Buchan exists, which in 1979 was in the possession of Christopher Crowder. It has been proposed that it is a self portrait, which would make it the artist's only known work before the voyage on the Endeavour.

 

On the first voyage of James Cook, the naturalist Joseph Banks was accompanied by a party of eight people, including the two artists Sydney Parkinson and Alexander Buchan, with the latter engaged for landscape and figure drawing. Banks' original plan was to have Parkinson draw faithful representations of plants and animals, and to have Buchan draw the scenery and natives. Both Parkinson and Buchan also drew coastal profiles, possibly on Cook's suggestion. Such views of the coast were often used as navigational aids and included in charts. It is possible that Cook himself instructed Buchan and Herman Spöring Jr., Banks' scientific secretary, in the drawing of views, as the work of both has similarities to Cook's own coastal views. Banks' associates produced work that was more accurate than the usual standard of the Royal Navy.

Buchan is not mentioned often in the surviving journals from the voyage. In Banks' journals, his first appearance is a note that Buchan drew views of the Cape Verde islands on 30 September 1768. Buchan's epilepsy first comes up in Banks' journal during an expedition in Tierra del Fuego. Endeavour lay at anchor in the Bay of Good Success on 15 January 1769. On 16 January, a group of eleven people including Banks, Daniel Solander, Buchan and four of Banks' servants went on an expedition in the country, attempting to reach the top of the hills. During this, Buchan had an epileptic seizure, a fire was lit, and the servants stayed with Buchan while Banks and others went on to search for alpine plants. On their return, the weather became cold and it started to snow, making it impossible to return to the ship. Two of Banks' servants, Richmond and Dorlton, got drunk on whiskey and died from exposure that night, but Buchan recovered.

 

On 20 January, Banks visited an Ona village, very likely together with Buchan, whose drawing of An Indian Town at Terra del Fuego (engraved as View of a Village in the Bay of Good Success, in the Island of Terra del Fuego) illustrates Banks' description:

The town itself was situate upon a dry Knowl among the trees, which were not at all cleard away, it consisted of not more than twelve or fourteen huts or wigwams of the most unartificial construction imaginable, indeed no thing bearing the name of a hut could possibly be built with less trouble. They consisted of a few poles set up and meeting together at the top in a conical figure, these were coverd on the weather side with a few boughs and a little grass, on the lee side about one eighth part of the circle was left open and against this opening was a fire made.

From Tierra del Fuego, the Endeavour continued to Tahiti in order to observe the 1769 transit of Venus, arriving at the island on 13 April. Banks recorded in his journal for 16 April 1769 that Buchan had an epileptic seizure: "Poor Mr Buchan the young man who I brought out as lanscape [sic] and figure painter was yesterday attackd by an epileptick fit [sic] , he was today quite insensible, our surgeon gives me very little hopes of him." He died at Matavai Bay on 17 April 1769. James Cook wrote in his journal:

At 2 oClock this Morning departed this Life Mr Alex Buchan Landscip Draftsman to Mr Banks, a Gentleman well skill'd in his profession and one that will be greatly miss'd in the course of this Voyage, he had long been subject to a disorder in his Bowels which had more than once brought him to the Very point of death and was at the same time subject to fits of one of which he was taken on Saturday morning, this brought on his former disorder which brought a period to his life.

This was the first mention of Buchan in Cook's journals. In a first draft of Cook's journal, he also stated about Buchan, "there are now none on board who understands this sort of drawing." On Banks' suggestion, Buchan's body was buried at sea as not to disturb the natives. Banks wrote of his employee's death:

I sincerely regret him as an ingenious and good young man, but his Loss to me is irretrevable, my airy dreams of entertaining my freinds in England with the scenes that I am to see here are vanishd. No account of the figures and dresses of men can be satisfactory unless illustrated with figures: had providence spard him a month longer what an advantage would it have been to my undertaking but I must submit.

After Buchan's death, his duties in drawing people and landscapes fell to Parkinson and Spöring.

Following Buchan's death, Banks took possession of all his drawings from the voyage. Buchan's natural history drawings are now in the British Natural History Museum, and include some drawings in pen and watercolour of marine animals from the coast of Brazil, as well as a cockroach from Madeira. The remaining material has been held by the British Library, since 1827, when Robert Brown transferred the library of Joseph Banks to the British Museum.

Buchan's best-known works are his illustrations of the people of western Tierra del Fuego, made during a stopover at the Bay of Success. For publication in John Hawkesworth's An Account of the Voyages (1773), Buchan's sketches were changed extensively by Giovanni Battista Cipriani to conform with Hawkesworth's interpretation of the Fuegians. Cipriani added additional figures to Buchan's Inhabitants of the island of Tierra del Fuego, in their hut before the images were engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi. Cipriani and Bartolozzi both had a classical education as history painters trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, and Cipriani used classical motifs to change the "wretched" inhabitants of the hut in Buchan's sketch into "comely youth and wise old men". However, the exposed genitals of the men in the image accurately follow both the description by Banks and Buchan's original. Another one of Buchan's drawings, of a village on Tierra del Fuego, was obtained by Sydney Parkinson's brother Stanfield from Banks, engraved by James Newton and published in Parkinson's Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas.