User:Ikeshut2/sandbox8: Difference between revisions – Wikipedia

Line 101: Line 101:

|mode=nolines

|mode=nolines

|align=center

|align=center

|File:Dotterels Silvester Diggles SLNSW FL838894.jpg|Watercolour painting of dottrels (plovers) – Siberian sand plover (”Anarhynchus mongolus”), double-banded plover (”Anarhynchus bicinctus”) and red-capped plover (”Anarhynchus ruficapillus”).

|File:Dotterels Silvester Diggles SLNSW FL838894.jpg|Watercolour painting of dottrels (plovers) Siberian sand plover (”Anarhynchus mongolus”), double-banded plover (”Anarhynchus bicinctus”) and red-capped plover (”Anarhynchus ruficapillus”).

|File:Birds Australia Diggles SLNSW FL456482.jpg|[[Tree martin]], [[Fairy martin]], and [[Rainbow bee-eater]], ”c”. 1865.

|File:Birds Australia Diggles SLNSW FL456482.jpg|[[Tree martin]], [[Fairy martin]], and [[Rainbow bee-eater]], ”c”. 1865.

|File:Galah Silvester Diggles SLNSW FL838476.jpg|[[Galah]] (”Eolophus roseicapilla”).

|File:Galah Silvester Diggles SLNSW FL838476.jpg|[[Galah]] (”Eolophus roseicapilla”).

19th-century Australian polymath

Silvester Diggles
Portrait of Silvester Diggles, Australia, ca. 1875
Born	Silvester Diggles (1817-01-24)24 January 1817 Liverpool, Lancashire, England
Died	21 March 1880(1880-03-21) (aged 63)
Occupation(s)	artist, musician, amateur ornithologist and entomologist.
Spouse	Eliza Bradley married from 1839-1857, Albina Birkett married from 1858-1880

Silvester Diggles (24 January 1817 – 21 March 1880) was an Australian artist and musician of British origin, as well as being a noted amateur ornithologist and entomologist.

Biography

Early life

Silvester Diggles was born on 24 January 1817 at Liverpool in Merseyside, the eldest son of Edward Holt Diggles and Elizabeth (née Silvester).^[1] His father was an ironmonger. The family lived for several years at Stone in Staffordshire in the early 1920s but had returned to Liverpool by the mid-1820s.^[2]

Silvester’s father died in 1831 leaving his widow with the ironmongery and six surviving children aged from five to fourteen.^[2]

By 1837 Diggles’ mother was running a boarding-house near Toxteth Park, south of the Liverpool city centre.^[2]

In May 1839 Diggles and Eliza Bradley were married in St. Michael-in-the-Hamlet church. Eliza’s father, John Bradley, was a private tutor of the classics and natural philosophy. Silvester and Eliza Diggles lived at Birkenhead, on the west bank of the River Mersey, and had two daughters and a son, born from 1840 to 1845.^[2]

Diggles made his living as a painter of miniatures and piano tuner. From 1845 he was listed in directories as a “teacher of music and drawing” and from 1851 as an “organist”.^[3] He was a religious man and joined the New Jerusalem Church in 1846.^[1]

Sydney

By 1853 Diggles had decided to emigrate to Australia. In early June he and his family departed from Liverpool aboard the small barque Willem Ernst. The vessel carried only twelve passengers, two families and a married lady. The Willem Ernst arrived at Sydney on 11 November 1853.^[4]

In Sydney Diggles worked as a piano tuner for W. J. Johnson and Co., with business premises in Pitt Street selling pianofortes and harmoniums, as well well as sheet music and providing services for the tuning and repair of instruments.^[3][5]

In November 1854 Diggles visited Brisbane on business, travelling there aboard the steamer Boomerang, and afterwards made the decision to return there to live.^[3]

Brisbane

Diggles and his family arrived at Brisbane on 29 January 1855 aboard the schooner Souvenir.^[6] Soon afterwards Diggles placed an advertisement in The Moreton Bay Courier announcing his arrival in Brisbane and advertising the services “of teaching the piano forte, singing and drawing, in a variety of styles”. His services included the tuning and regulating of pianofortes and miniature portraiture.^[7]

Diggles’ wife Eliza died on 18 August 1857 after “long and painful” illness.^[8]

Silvester Diggles and Albina Birkett were married at Kangaroo Point on 26 January 1858. The couple had two sons, born in 1859 and 1862.^[9][10]

Diggles was well known in Brisbane; he was a founder of the Brisbane Choral Society in 1859 and the Brisbane Philharmonic Society in 1861, and was a familiar accompanist at concerts and church services. In 1877 he was given a grand benefit concert by the musicians of the city, and called “the father of music in Brisbane”. He served as New Jerusalem Church’s leader in Brisbane. He was also a Freemason.^[1]

Diggles was a founding member of Queensland’s first scientific institution, the Queensland Philosophical Society, and helped establish the Queensland Museum, which the society instigated in 1862.^[1]

He was a naturalist with a special interest in ornithology and entomology. In the 1860s he began work on the publication The Ornithology of Australia, of which twenty-one parts were issued from 1865 to 1870. Each part included six lithographed and hand-coloured plates (quarto size), with each illustration accompanied by a page of descriptive text. His output by 1870 had only covered about one third of the known Australian birds, at which stage Diggles had been forced to discontinue the publication from lack of funds.^[1]

Prospectus of Ornithology of Australia distributed in July 1865.^[11] The first part of Ornithology of Australia was published in November 1865.^[12]

He served as the Queensland representative on the 1871/72 solar eclipse expedition to Cape Sidmouth, Far North Queensland, and reported on the birds, insects and scenery there to the Philosophical Society.

Diggles’ health was beginning to fail from about 1875. Rather than continue with his Ornithology of Australia project, he produced his lithographic illustrations under a new title Companion to Gould’s Handbook: or, Synopsis of the Birds of Australia, which was published in two volumes in 1877.^[1] The drawings on stone for the Companion to Gould’s Handbook were mainly Diggles’ work, with additional lithographic drawings done by Henry G. Eaton (mostly “faithful copies” of Diggles’ original drawings).^[14] Rowena Birkett probably assisted her uncle by hand-colouring many of the printed copies for this publication, using Diggles’ watercolour originals as a guide.^[15][16] When the Companion to Gould’s Handbook went on sale in mid-1877 it was offered in two versions. The two volumes of the “coloured by hand” version cost twenty-five pounds, whereas the two uncoloured volumes sold for seven pounds and ten shillings.^[17]

Diggles is best known for his authorship of a major ornithological work which was never completely published because of financial problems. He and his niece Rowena Birkett produced some 325 hand-coloured plates of some 600 Australian birds for a work titled The Ornithology of Australia, of which three volumes were published from 1865 to 1870.^[1]

Last years

Diggles’ health deteriorated from about 1875.

In 1877 Diggles suffered a stroke and was left with “lingering paralysis”, as a result of which he increasingly relied upon his niece and artistic protege.^[9] She became more directly involved in his next project, Australian Insects and Their Transformations, which her uncle had commenced in 1871. By 1878 twenty-six transformations had been completed, of which sixteen were signed and dated by Rowena in the last two years, in the process “developing her own more vigorous style” of drawing.^[18][16]

In 1879 Rowena Birkett left Brisbane to take up a position as a governess.^[18]

Silvester Diggles died on 21 March 1880 at his home in Kangaroo Point, aged 64, survived by a widow, two daughters of his first marriage and two sons of the second. He was buried in Toowong Cemetery.^[19][20]

Australian Insects and Their Transformations remained incomplete and unpublished and Rowena retained the whole series of drawings after the death of her uncle.^[21]

Legacy

Among the species that bear his name are the butterfly Hypochrysops digglesii, the rare chafer beetle Tapeionschema digglesii and the moth genus Digglesia (which A.J. Turner bestowed on him in 1911 noting: “After the late Mr. Diggles, the pioneer entomologist of Queensland”).^[22] The moth genus of Digglesia, the brushed trapdoor spider Ozicrypta digglesi, and the sea snail Zafra digglesi are named after him.^[23]

The original manuscript of ‘Ornithology of Australia,’ ca. 1863–1875, made up of four albums containing approximately 245 plates of watercolour drawings are digitised and held by the State Library of New South Wales.^[24]

Publications

• Silvester Diggles (1865-1870), Ornithology of Australia, parts 1 to 21, printed for the author by T. P. Pugh of Brisbane.

Gallery

References

Sources

• Rod Fisher (2000), ‘Silvester Diggles: Brisbane’s Pioneer Musician, Scientist, Artist and New Churchman’, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, Vol. 17 Issue 6, May 2000, pages 271-286.

Further reading

• Louis J. Pigott (2010), The Bird Man of Brisbane, Brisbane: Boolarong Press (a biography of Silvester Diggles).