MAPS, PRINTS AND PAINTINGS

Map of Bermuda, Robyn ca. 1690.

Although there is a small air-conditioned gallery on the second floor of the Boat Loft, where special exhibitions are mounted, prints and paintings are to be found in many displays throughout the Museum. In most cases, these depict some facet of the early Bermuda scene, ranging from the steamers of the Quebec Steamship Line to the early days of the Dockyard.

Of particular interest to the visitor will be the LeMarchant prints, the originals of which were painted in the mid-1850s and were brought back to Bermuda in 1973. These, displayed in the Main Exhibition Hall, contain scenes of most parts of the Island, with the Dockyard and St. George’s being especially prominent. The dockyard pictures show it during the major construction phase following the Crimean War, soon after the East Storehouse was completed and before the original Great Storehouse (with its one tower) behind it was demolished.

In the Forster Cooper Building, charts and pictures show the history of the Royal Naval Establishment at Bermuda. Tracings of the original Hurd charts of the 1790s and the subsequent Warren charts of 1808 show how Ireland Island was chosen as the final dockyard site. The Driver prints from the early 1820s show the first buildings, and one of them shows a mass of scantlings standing on the hill on the right where Commissioner’s House was being built. Later pictures and photographs carry the story through to the present century.

There is a small collection of maps of Bermuda ranging from some of the earliest ones by such renowned cartographers as J. Speed, G. Blaeu and H. Hondius to 19th century ones by Thomson and John Tallis.

View of the Dockyard from the Commissioner’s House, 1857. (Le Marchant)

Marine paintings by Dominic Serres (18th century) (L.Webb)