“We are here in a universe of wonders.”

The art of Silvester Diggles.

Silvester Diggles (1817-1880) settled in Brisbane with his family in early 1855, after a brief but much-appreciated visit to the area as a musician and piano-tuner the previous year. The townspeople of Brisbane read his advertisements for his musical instrument repair business, and noted that he also instructed in music and drawing, and offered to take miniatures in the photographic process. Talented chap, apparently.

Within months, Silvester Diggles was performing on stage with visiting musical lions, and had founded the Choral Society for the School of Arts.

In April 1857, Mr Diggles began a series of public lectures on Entomology for the education of the general public. These were scholarly lectures, but designed to keep the interest of an audience who had perhaps not undertaken tertiary studies. He illustrated his topics with large watercolours, occasionally drawing intricate pictures on a blackboard mid-lecture.

At the beginning of the lecture, he told his audience,

“We are here in a universe of wonders, and the more we look into it the more we shall find to be astonished at.”

The audience was unprepared for just how talented and scholarly Silvester Diggles was. He brought his audience through the history and philosophy behind entomological study, from Socrates and Pliny the Elder through to the classification method of Linnaeus without being dull.

The genuine curiosity and wonder Diggles felt about the natural world engaged his listeners. He didn’t see the world from the point of view of a music teacher stuck out in the wretched colonies, trying to make a living. He saw a world of beauty, of new species of birds and insects. He heard and made music because of his great love for it. He wanted to share his wonder at the world and inspire others to learn and appreciate it.

Gradually, his lectures on natural history developed into a lifelong and largely unpaid career as a masterly illustrator of insects and birds. In the process, he helped to found the Queensland Museum.

The Ornithology of Australia

Silvester Diggles’ greatest work was the Ornithology of Australia. He produced it in sections, from 1865-1870. He created hundreds of watercolours, wrote the text, hand-coloured lithographed plates and released it in bound volumes of six plates per volume. It was a tremendously expensive operation, and he poured his heart and soul into it, in turn ruining his health. In the end, he was unable to finish his great work, and the Brisbane arts community held a benefit to cover his expenses in his final years.

What he left, however incomplete, was exquisite. Several bound volumes of his watercolours are held in the Mitchell Library. The Queensland Art Gallery has been collecting others.

Here are some parts of Silvester Diggles’ universe of wonders:

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Dessins originaux de l’Iconographie des chenilles
Guenée, A. (Achille), 1809-1880, compiler
Diggles, Silvester, 1817-1880, artist
Buckler, William, 1814-1884, artist. National Library of Australia.

Diggles, Silvester, Australian Birds. The Queensland Art Gallery.

Diggles, Silvester, Self-portrait, c 1847. National Library of Australia.

E. N. Marks, ‘Diggles, Silvester (1817–1880)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1972.