Who is De la Beche?

Who is Henry De la Beche?

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De la Beche by William Brockedon (1842)
Color-adjusted from National Portrait Gallery [npg.org.uk]

Henry Thomas De la Beche (1796-1855) was one of the foremost geologists in Britain in the generation before Darwin. He was the founder and first director of the British Geological Survey, the first such body in the world. The maps he produced for the Survey in Devon kicked off the Devonian Controversy, a debate that shook the field in the 1830s. The resolution of the Devonian Controversy would not only see two new periods added to the geologic timescale (Devonian and Permian), but play an important role in refining geologic methodology. In time he would become president of both the Geological Society of London and the Paleontographical Society, as well as a recipient of the Wollaston Prize.¹

His geological work was aided by his competency as an artist and scientific illustrator. Through his publications he made contributions to what science historian Martin Rudwick has called "the range and efficacy of the visual 'language' of geology" (i.e. in maps, sections, diagrams, and the like). His watercolor depiction of the Jurassic seascape of Dorset, Duria Antiquior, is hailed by art historian Zoë Lescaze as the first example of "paleoart", an imagined scene of what the ancient Earth might have really looked like. Beside his professional output, he also used his artistic skills to draw cartoons about geology.

His interest in cartooning seems to have grown out of his habit of drawing cartoons in his diary. Autobiographical sketches head many of his 1820s diary entries. Some of these sketches make a satirical point. Others simply describe a scene, yet do so with a vivacity that seems more akin to a cartoon than a pure descriptive sketch. It was probably a short jump from using cartoons to describe his life to using cartoons to make arguments about his work.

De la Beche's life story is not all roses. It must be noted that De la Beche's wealth came from ownership of a Jamaican sugar plantation - that is to say, his wealth was derived from slave labor. Nor can it be imagined that he was an absentee owner: He lived in Jamaica for a year in the 1820s. Slavery only began to be abolished in the British colonies in the 1830s. For more information, see here.

For information about some of the other individuals discussed on this site, see the here.