picturing the new world: the hand-colored de bry engravings of

The images shown in this presentation are from a rare hand-colored edition of the book in the North Carolina Collection at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The North Carolina Collection has digitized the illustrations in an online exhibition at http://www2.lib.unc.edu/dc/debry/

Commentary in this slide presentation has been adapted from the North Carolina Collection’s online exhibition as well.

Picturing the New WorldThe Hand-colored de Bry Engravings of 1590

About This Volume

The de Bry edition of Thomas Harriot’s A Briefe and True Report was published in Frankfurt in 1590. There were editions printed at roughly the same time in four different languages: English, Latin, French, and German. Many copies of this first edition have survived and are now housed in libraries around the world. Among these are a handful of copies in color. The technology did not exist at the time to mass-produce color illustrations, thus these copies would have been colored by hand.

The artists who applied color to the printed engravings clearly did not have access to John White’s original watercolors. The hand-coloring on the engravings differs from White’s originals, often dramatically so. Nowhere is that more evident than in the depictions of many of the Native Americans in the illustrations shown on this website. While the native inhabitants of North Carolina are shown in White’s watercolors to have brown skin and black hair, they appear in the hand-colored engravings with pale skin and blonde hair. One explanation for this is that they were colored by a German artist who simply assumed that people around the world looked like the ones that he or she encountered every day.

Title page of the German translation of Thomas Harriot’s “A Briefe and True Account of the New Found Land of Virginia,” published in Frankfurt, 1590

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

Coat of Arms

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

Adam and Eve

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

Map of Raleigh’s Virginia

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The arrival of the Englishmen in Virginia

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

A Weroan or great Lord of Virginia

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

One of the Chief Ladies of Secota

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

One of the religious Men in the Town of Secota

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

A young gentle Woman Daughter of Secota

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

A Chief Lord of Roanoac

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

A Chief Lady of Pomeiooc

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

An aged Man in his Winter Garment

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

How the chief Ladies of the Town of Dasemunkepeuc carry their Children and dress

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The Conjurer

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The Way in which they make Boats

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The Manner of Fishing in Virginia

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The broiling of their Fish over the Flames

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The seething of their Meat in earthen Pots

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

Their sitting at Meat

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

Their Manner of praying with Rattles about the Fire

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

Their dances which they use at their high Feasts (left side)

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

Their dances which they use at their high Feasts (right side)

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The Town of Pomeiooc

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The Town of Secota

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The Idol Kiwasa

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The Tomb of their Weroans or Chief Lords

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The sundry Marks of the Chief Men of Virginia

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The true Picture of One Pict

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The true Picture of a Woman Pict

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The true Picture of a young Daughter of the Picts

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The true Picture of a Man of the neighboring Nation to the Picts

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

The true Picture of a Woman of the neighboring Nation to the Picts

Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection

About Theodore de Bry

Theodore de Bry (1528-1598) was trained as a goldsmith and engraver in the Flemish town of Liege. When the first accounts of Spanish and British explorers to South and North America began to be published in the 1580s, de Bry became interested in producing illustrated editions of these early reports of the Americas. In the late 1580s he traveled to London, where he made a series of engravings based on the watercolors of John White. De Bry and his family settled in Frankfurt, Germany, where in 1590 he produced an illustrated edition of Thomas Harriot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. De Bry worked with another engraver, Gijsbert van Veen (1558-1630), whose signature appears on four of the plates. A Briefe and True Report would be the first volume of de Bry’s ten volume “America” series, which included illustrated editions of other accounts of exploration in the Americas. While de Bry’s engravings of native North and South Americans were based either on paintings, written descriptions, or both, his images reflect his decidedly European bias. Nonetheless, these were the first images that many people were to see of North and South America and helped to encourage European interest in the “new world.”

Sources:

Paul Hulton. America, 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White.Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press and the British Museum, 1984.

“Theodor de Bry.” Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed 26 October 2006. http://www.groveart.com/

Thomas Harriot. A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia: The Complete 1590 Theodor de Bry Edition. Introduction by Paul Hulton. New York: Dover Publications, 1972.

Jacques Busbee. “Art as a Handmaiden of History.” In The North Carolina Booklet vol. 10, no. 1 (July 1910), pp. 4-11.

Davidson, James West and Mark Hamilton Lytle. After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection. New York: Knopf, 1982. See chapter five, “The ‘Noble Savage’ and the Artist’s Canvas: Interpreting Pictorial Evidence.”