An Indian Werowance, or Chief,
John White, watercolour, c. 1585.
© The Trustees of the British Museum.
All rights reserved.

 
The town of Secotan, John White, watercolour, c. 1585.
©The Trustees of the British Museum.
All rights reserved.

Purchase tickets to
Jamestown Settlement 
and the Yorktown Victory
Center online




FOR YOUNG PEOPLE:
Use this Artifact Odyssey guide to explore the John White exhibition, the Jamestown Settlement galleries and outdoor areas and discover how historians use nature, artifacts, images and words to learn about the people and places of 17th-century Virginia.

British Museum Exhibition of
John White Watercolors

A New World: England's First View of America
July 15, 2008 - October 15, 2008 
Jamestown Settlement 

Jamestown Settlement will exhibit the 16th-century watercolor drawings of John White from the British Museum’s “A New World: England’s First View of America” July 15 through October 15, 2008.

The drawings are the earliest visual record by an Englishman of the flora, fauna and people of the New World.  White accompanied a number of expeditions sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh to Virginia in the 1580s and was governor of the short-lived colony at Roanoke Island, part of modern North Carolina.  He departed for England in 1587 to obtain more supplies, but war with Spain delayed his return until 1590.  By then the colonists had vanished, and Roanoke became known as the “Lost Colony.”  

Jamestown, America’s first permanent English colony, was established 17 years later, about 100 miles away.  White’s depictions of the Algonquian-speaking people of the region have been an important resource in the development of Jamestown Settlement’s gallery exhibits and outdoor re-created Powhatan Indian village. 

Scenes from other parts of the Americas and depictions of peoples of the world also are among the more than 70 White drawings in the exhibition. White’s work is widely known through adaptations by other artists, especially Theodor de Bry, whose engravings after White’s watercolors illustrate a 1590 edition of Thomas Harriot’s “A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia.”  

The exhibition at Jamestown Settlement is being funded in part by donations and grants, including an appropriation from James City County.  The John White watercolors will be located in Jamestown Settlement’s special exhibition gallery.

Daniel K. Richter, Richard S. Dunn Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America will present "Tassentasse in Tsenacomoco: Native People and the English, 1560-1622," the second in a companion lecture series to A New World: England's First View of America special exhibition from the British Museum featuring the watercolor drawings of John White. Reservations recommended at (757) 253-4415 or rsvp.lecture@jyf.virginia.gov.

Attendees will have an opportunity to view the exhibition from 6-6:45 p.m. and, following the lecture, until 8:30 p.m.

A lecture is also scheduled in Jamestown Settlement's Robins Foundation Theater at 7 p.m. Saturday, September 10, with Karen Hearn, Curator of 16th- and 17th-Century Art at Tate Britain in London.