nd seals contained in the Scientific
Report of the Discovery Expedition is still the best available, and makes
excellent reading even to the non-scientist. On the outward journey of
the Terra Nova he was still writing up his work for the Royal Commission
on Grouse Disease, the published report of which he never lived to see.
But those who knew him best will probably remember Wilson by his
water-colour paintings rather than by any other form of his many-sided
work.

As a boy his father sent him away on rambling holidays, the only
condition being that he should return with a certain number of drawings.
I have spoken of the drawings which he made when sledging or when
otherwise engaged away from painting facilities, as at Hut Point. He
brought back to Winter Quarters a note-book filled with such sketches of
outlines and colours: of sunsets behind the Western Mountains: of lights
reflected in the freezing sea or in the glass houses of the ice foot: of
the steam clouds on Erebus by day and of the Aurora Australis by night.
Next door to Scott he rigged up for himself a table, consisting of two
venesta cases on end supporting a large drawing-board some four feet
square. On this he set to work systematically to paint the effects which
he had seen and noted. He painted with his paper wet, and necessarily
therefore, he worked quickly. An admirer of Ruskin, he wished to paint
what he saw as truly as possible. If he failed to catch the effect he
wished, he tore up the picture however beautiful the result he had
obtained. There is no doubt as to the faithfulness of his colouring: the
pictures recalled then and will still recall now in intimate detail the
effects which we saw together. As to the accuracy of his drawing it is
sufficient to say that in the Discovery Expedition Scott wrote on his
Southern Journey:

"Wilson is the most indefatigable person. When it is fine and clear, at
the end of our fatiguing days he will spend two or three hours seated in
the door of the tent, sketching each detail of the splendid mountainous
coast-scene to the west. His sketches are most astonishingly accurate; I
have tested his proportions by actual angular measurement and found them
correct."[136]

In addition to the drawings of land, pack, icebergs and Barrier, the
primary object of which was scientific and geographical, Wilson has left
a number of paintings of atmospheric phenomena which are not only
scientifically accurate but are also exceed