Exploration & Travel sales bring together paintings, photographs, books, manuscripts and artefacts relating to the historical voyages and expeditions of renowned navigators and explorers, amongst them Cook and Bligh in the Pacific; Humboldt and Darwin in the Americas; Stanley and Livingstone in Africa; Burton and Lawrence in the Middle East; Scott and Shackleton in the Antarctic, and Mallory and Hillary on Everest. As well as narratives by early travellers, the sales include topographical pictures by itinerant artists in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australasia and the Pacific, featuring such leading artists as Hodges, Webber, Rugendas, the Daniells, Baines, Glover, Martens, Chevalier, Chinnery and Borget.

These sales in recent years have included the dispersal of relics from some of the most emotive of all names in the annals of exploration: The Scott Relics in 1999, The Shackleton Collection in 2001, The Freycinet Collection (artwork from two French voyages to the Pacific), The Bligh Relics and The Henry Morton Stanley Collection, all in 2002, and Chinnery’s Macao album from the Reeves collection in 2005. Private treaty sales have been led by John Webber’s Portrait of Poetua, sold on behalf of the descendants of the Tahitian princess to Te Papa Tongawera, the National Museum of New Zealand, for €1,120,000 in 2010.

See also: Travel, Science & Natural History