James Gay Sawkins

James Gay Sawkins (1806 – July 20, 1878) was a British artist, geologist, copper miner, and illustrator. He was a member of the Geological Society of London who joined and led research during England's West Indian Geological Surveys of the islands of Trinidad and Jamaica. He also worked in the mining industries of Jamaica, Peru, Hawaii, and Australia.

Circa 1849, Sawkins testified against Navy general Joseph Warren Revere in a Naval Court of Inquiry due to Revere's possible affair with his wife, Octavia "Rosa" Sawkins.

Afterwards, from 1859 to 1862, he worked under English naturalist Lucas Barrett on the Jamaican Geological Survey, which was part of England's geology research of the West Indies. After Barrett's untimely death in 1862, Sawkins took over as the leader of the research team.

In 1950, geologist H. R. Hose claimed Sawkin's 1869 Reports on the Geology of Jamaica "form the basis of all subsequent work in Jamaica." For example, in 2021, Sawkins's 1869 research was used by wildlife ecologist Dr. Susan Koenig to persuade NEPA to protect the Jamaican Cockpit Country from bauxite mining.

In 2011, Nicholas Mirzoeff stated that "Sawkins's careful anthropological style...concentrated on observation rather than moral commentary." The Honolulu Museum of Art, Mission House Museum (Honolulu, Hawaii) and the National Library of Australia (Canberra) are among the public collections holding works by James Gay Sawkins.

Personal life

Sawkins was born in 1806 in Southampton, England. He was a native of Yeovil, a town in Somerset, England. At the age of 14, he moved to Baltimore, Maryland, with his family, where he made his living painting miniature portraits on ivory. He achieved a professorship of drawing at an unspecified Virginia college. In his youth, he travelled to "regions west of the Mississippi", which had only been acquired by the U.S. in 1803. He briefly lived in New Orleans, Louisiana.

He visited Hawaii from January, 1850 to June, 1852. After working in Australia, he returned to England in 1855.

At the age of 18, Sawkins married Jane Grace Andras in Baltimore, Maryland. The couple had two daughters. Despite the belief that his wife died some time before 1849, she outlived James, dying sometime after the 1880 census when she was living in Canton, Mississippi with her grandson Harvey Otto. Nevertheless, this marriage would later complicate his allegations against Revere.

Some time before 1849, Sawkins married Octavia "Rosa" Sawkins, a British teacher from Nassau, New Providence. The couple exhibited unusual behavior which bordered on psychological abuse. Gold rush hopeful Andrew S. Church described his candid 1849 observation of the Sawkins couple in his 1901 Memoirs:[It] was evident that an angry discussion was under way, as the shrieking treble would not be silenced at the command of one we took to be an Englishman...[Rosa] was weeping and pleading "to go back home" while the man was swinging his arms and explaining excitedly, "My God, it is impossible, it cannot be." Soon the lady rushed out of the modern rocking-chair in which she had been performing antics worthy of a circus, and ran into the adobe building where we heard a door slam and a bolt snap. Then the man [James] noticed us, saying, "How do you do, Gentlemen, are you from the city?"The above occurred in November 1849. Church describes Rosa Sawkins as "young lady" with a "surly companion", claiming "[James] Sawkins appeared little inclined to allow any comradeship with his wife" including objecting to Church's attempt to offer her his overcoat during a windy boat ride.

On March 27, 1855, Sawkins married Mary Hussey Brodie, daughter of British Whig politician William Bird Brodie.

Career

Illustrations

From 1830 to 1835, Sawkins lived in Mexico, earning his wealth as a painter while researching mineral resources of the country.

After briefly living in New Orleans, Sawkins lived in Cuba from 1835 to 1845, where he made living from art commissions as well as mineral operations.

In 1837, Sawkins created various scenic and architectural illustrations of Mitla, Mexico, for historian Brantz Mayer's nonfiction book, Observations on Mexican History and Archaeology, With a Special Notice of Zapotec Remains. The book was published by Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge in June 1856.

In 1847, Sawkins taught art lessons and sold portraits and Mexican landscapes in Charlotte Amalie, the capital city of the island of St. Thomas. According to visual theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff, Sawkins's artworks inspired Camille Pissarro, a French painter born in St. Thomas.

Geology

Sawkins did not have a formal education in geology; he likely learned through autonomous research and running various mineral operations in Cuba and Peru.

The 1848 announcement of gold in California led him to move to the state the same year, representing a Peruvian mining corporation. Shortly afterward, he organized a Naval Court of Inquiry against Revere, one of his tenants. His gold rush undertaking failed, and he subsequently became a mine inspector in Hawaii and Queensland, Australia.

In 1854, Sawkins visited the island of Tongatapu to examine the damage caused by an earthquake. During this time, he created a portrait of Tongatapu "Queen Charlotte", a.k.a. Sālote Lupepauʻu.

In 1857, the Colonial Office in London set up the West Indian Geological Survey, a geology research team. The first area of interest was the island of Trinidad. The Director of the group was George Parks Wall, assisted by James Gay Sawkins, an American working as a copper miner in Jamaica. Wall resigned in 1859 following the completion of the Trinidad research. Sawkins must still have been interested, as he signed up for the next archaeological survey: Jamaica. The group would be led by 22-year-old English geologist Lucas Barrett.

On April first, 1859, James G. Sawkins and his wife Mary Brodie Sawkins arrived at St. Thomas, Jamaica via a mail steamer; they had sailed from the Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Sawkins brought scientific instruments used in his geological survey of Trinidad.……

原文较长，这里只摘了前面一部分，摘自英文维基百科「James G. Sawkins」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。