Background
Dampier was born in 1799 at the village of Codford Street Peter in Wiltshire, England He was baptised on the 20th of December 1799 (Latter- Day Saints (Mormons) IGI record batch # C014402).
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Robert Dampier
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Career
In 1819 he went to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil as a clerk. In 1825, he was picked up in Rio to be the expedition artist on the English ship HMS Blonde under the command of Captain George Anson Byron. The ship was returning the bodies of King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu to the Hawaiian Islands (known by the British as "Sandwich Islands"), after both died from measles during a visit to England.
Robert Dampier spent 11 weeks in Hawaii painting portraits in oil paint and making pencil drawings of landscapes.
In 1837 he became rector of Langton Matravers church. He had a daughter Frederika from the second marriage.
Although employed a rector, he continued to sketch until his death in 1874. Major works by Robert Dampier are held by the Honolulu Museum of Art and Washington Place, also in Honolulu, Hawaii.
