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The village or town of Pomeiooc was one of the first the English visited. It was surrounded by a palisade with the houses arranged around a central communal area.

Secotan was an open village, arranged along a central area that White depicted resembling an English main street.

This watercolor of a great chief is the best known of John White's images.

Indian man and woman eat hulled corn on a wooden platter on a reed mat.

White's pineapple drawing influenced English architecture.

This drawing is renowned as first picture of an American butterfly.

Indians fished for food in the salt marshes of the North Carolina coast. This is one of the John White paintings on display at Jamestown.

Puffer fish are found in the salt-marsh coastal waters.

John White's map shows the coast of 'Virginia,' now North Carolina, about 1585.

Land crabs live in sandy holes inland from the sea.

Indians used the box turtle for food, medicine and ceremonies.

A once-in-a-lifetime exhibit, "A New World: England's First View of America," shows John White's pre-Jamestown concept of "Virginia."

BY WILLIAM L. SHARFMAN

Date published: 7/26/2008

BY WILLIAM L. SHARFMAN

FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR

JAMESTOWN

This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment: The original John White watercolors, owned by the British Museum and last on public view in the mid-1960s, are actually on display upstairs at the Jamestown Settlement Museum, the final venue in a year's tour in this country.

Of all the exhibits of the John White paintings, 75 pieces done in black lead, ink and watercolor in 1585, this is the simplest and purest yet, with the focus squarely and solely on White. To preserve the paintings, the lighting is controlled and limited, but the works are simply grouped to make it easy to view and comprehend White's achievement.

WHO'S JOHN WHITE?

Today the name John White is not widely recognized among museum goers, yet this English gentleman-adventurer made five voyages to the New World between 1584 and 1590, sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh. The watercolor drawings in this show--painted 22 years before the Jamestown Colony--gave specific vision to the English and European imagination about the New World for the next 200 years.

Together with explanations written by Thomas Harriot, an accomplished mathematician who accompanied White, these watercolors recorded plants, animals, fish, birds and people present in what was claimed as "Virginia," after the Virgin Queen Elizabeth, but was really Roanoke Island in the Outer Banks, what we know today as North Carolina.

The works in this exhibit all come from a single album acquired by the British Museum in 1866, and it's here. The album was in Sotheby's warehouse in 1865, where it was damaged by water in a fire. As a result, the original binding is gone, so we aren't certain for whom this album was done in the first place, probably Sir Walter Raleigh, under whose six-year patent from Queen Elizabeth (1584-1590) these voyages were made.

What: "A New World: England's First View of America." Where: Jamestown Settlement When: Exhibit continues through Oct. 15. Hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Aug. 15, then 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Companion lecture series: Aug. 9, 7 p.m.--Daniel K. Richter of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania; Sept. 20, 7 p.m.--Karen Hearn, curator of 16th- and 17th-century British art at Tate Britain in London. Reservations recommended at 757/253-4415 or rsvp.lecture@jyf.virginia.gov Information: 888/593-4682; 757/253-5299; historyisfun.org There is an excellent comprehensive explanatory catalog of John White's work: "A New World: England's First View of America" by Kim Sloan, et al. (University of North Carolina Press, 256 pages), $60 (hardback); $29.95 (softcover)

Date published: 7/26/2008