Goosewing fan, Wullaki clan, Arnhem Land

Anthropologist and biologist, Donald Thomson engaged five talented women artists to prepare scientific illustrations for his publications. The women produced extraordinarily fine copies of the ethnographic objects that Thomson collected from Cape York Peninsula in Queensland in the 1920s and early 1930s, Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory in the 1930s and early 1940s, and in the Great Sandy and Western Deserts of central Australia in the late 1950s and 1960s. Hundreds of line drawings illustrating the rich cultural heritage of Indigenous Australians were done to Thomson's very demanding specifications and exact proportions (usually 1:1) with every minute detail correct. They were intended to illustrate Thomson's publications, however a good deal still remain unpublished. This fine drawing of a goosewing fan captures the fine texture of the feathers of the magpie goose. The fan was collected in 1937 at Gaatji where Donald Thomson set up one of his base camps in Arnhem Land. The pen and ink drawing is almost certainly by Joan Elizabeth Clark.