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Dr James Taylor MA (Hons), FRSA (born 1963) is a British author, expert on maritime art, and former curator of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, east London.
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Dr James Taylor MA (Hons), FRSA (born 1963) is a British author, expert on maritime art, and former curator of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, east London.
A school trip in the 1970s to Captain James Cook’s Birthplace Museum started a lifelong interest in maritime art and history for James Taylor.[ citation needed ]
Taylor was educated at the Universities of St Andrews and Manchester. Early in his career, Taylor spent time as an auctioneer with Phillips Fine Art Auctioneers, where he was the Victorian paintings specialist. From 1989, he was a curator of paintings, drawings and prints, exhibition organiser and Corporate Membership Manager at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. [1] He began to publish on marine art in the mid 1990s.
Taylor has since written several books, including illustrated histories on maritime and yachting art, and, in 2008, 'The Voyage of the Beagle', charting the story of the ship made famous by Charles Darwin. In March 2009, Dr John Van Wyhe wrote in BBC History Magazine , that 'The Voyage of the Beagle' ‘brings together a wonderful mixture of old and new illustrations and information about the voyage from wildly scattered sources.’ [2] He has also produced a study on the popular English 20th century cartoonist and Punch magazine editor, Fougasse, who created the anti-rumour and gossip posters during World War II. His publication Your Country Needs You - The Secret History of the Propaganda Poster (Saraband, August 2013) was timed to coincide with the start of the World War I commemorations in 2014. Dazzle - Disguise & Disruption in War & Art and Pack Up Your Troubles - How Humorous Postcards Helped to Win World War One were published in September and October 2016 by The Pool of London Press and Bloomsbury respectively.
Taylor guest-curated the exhibition 'Dazzle - Disguise and Disruption in War and Art' at the St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery in Lymington (16 June -23 September 2018) that included loans from private and public collections including: the British Museum, Imperial War Museum, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Russell-Cotes, Southampton City Art Gallery, Tate Britain and the V & A. Also, co-organised the Dazzle study day at the University of Southampton on 30 June 2018. See: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/greatwar_unknownwar/news/events/2018/06/30-dazzle-study-day.page
Among Taylor’s professional achievements are several Sir James Caird Awards for writing, and the Sir Geoffrey Callender Award for outstanding achievement in supporting the public lecture programme and developing the corporate membership scheme of the National Maritime Museum. Since 1999, he has worked as a freelance writer and lecturer. In 2001, he was appointed an official lecturer for the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS), now renamed The Arts Society. According to the Mere Literary Festival, Taylor ‘lectures regularly to a wide range of societies, including NADFAS [The Arts Society] around the world.’ [3] https://theartssociety.org/about-us
In June 2015 Taylor was awarded a PhD from the University of Sussex for his thesis on William Westall (1781-1850) the 'landscape and figure draughtsman' who sailed with Matthew Flinders on the voyage of HMS Investigator (1801-3) – the first recorded circumnavigation of Australia.
His publication The Voyage of the Beagle... was short-listed for the Mountbatten Maritime Prize in 2016. [4]
Taylor is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
HMS Beagle was a Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy, one of more than 100 ships of this class. The vessel, constructed at a cost of £7,803, was launched on 11 May 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames. Later reports say the ship took part in celebrations of the coronation of King George IV of the United Kingdom, passing through the old London Bridge, and was the first rigged man-of-war afloat upriver of the bridge. There was no immediate need for Beagle, so she "lay in ordinary", moored afloat but without masts or rigging. She was then adapted as a survey barque and took part in three survey expeditions.
Sir William Robert Patrick Knox-Johnston is a British sailor. In 1969, he became the first person to perform a single-handed non-stop circumnavigation of the globe. Along with Sir Peter Blake, he won the second Jules Verne Trophy, for which they were also named the ISAF Yachtsman of the Year award. In 2007, at the age of 67, he set a record as the oldest yachtsman to complete a round the world solo voyage in the Velux 5 Oceans Race.
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Cyril Kenneth Bird CBE, known by the pen name Fougasse, was a British cartoonist.
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John van Wyhe is a British historian of science, with a focus on Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, at the National University of Singapore. He holds various academic and research positions, ranging from founder and director of The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online, Scientific Associate, The Natural History Museum (London), a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Member of the British Society for the History of Science. He has given more than 50 public lectures on Darwin in more than a dozen countries. He lectures and broadcasts on Darwin, evolution, science and religion and the history of science around the world. He also wrote The Darwin Experience, a biographical book about Charles Darwin.
A nautical chronometer made by Thomas Earnshaw (1749–1828), and once part of the equipment of HMS Beagle, the ship that carried Charles Darwin on his voyage around the world, is held in the British Museum. The chronometer was the subject of one episode of the BBC's series A History of the World in 100 Objects.
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