William Buelow Gould

Gould's life in Van Diemen's Land was the subject of the award-winning historical fiction novel Gould's Book of Fish, written by Richard Flanagan, centring on Gould's production of the Sketchbook of fishes. In April 2011 Gould's original Sketchbook of fishes was recognised as a document of world significance by UNESCO.

Early life Gould was born as William Holland in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. While little is known of his early life, it is thought that he received artistic training under Irish painter William Mulready, R.A., in London, and German lithographer Rudolph Ackermann in The Strand, and that he worked in Spode's factory in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, as a painter of porcelain. His work also included landscape sketches providing important insights into the convict settlement. The Macquarie Harbour settlement was closed in 1833, and along with the other remaining prisoners, Gould was transferred to the Port Arthur Penal Station

Sketchbook of fishes

It was around 1832, at Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, that Gould produced his noted Sketchbook of fishes, also known as Gould's sketchbook of fishes, Gould's book of fish, or Sketchbook of Fishes in Macquarie Harbour. This sketchbook consisted of thirty-six separate watercolour-on-paper sketches measuring x each. While only six of these works are signed by the author, and none are dated, all works are attributed to Gould. The sketchbook includes a numbered list of the fish, with common names written in pencil by G. T. Stilwell, and species names in pencil by A. M. Olsen, who is thought to have formally identified the fish.

This work was made famous in recent times by Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan's critically acclaimed and Commonwealth Writers' Prize winning 2001 novel Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish. This book is a fictionalised account of Gould's life in Van Diemen's Land, focussing on his time at Macquarie Harbour and his work on the Sketchbook of fishes. The book includes a reproduction of Gould's Common seadragon painting on the cover (although the actual image used varies depending on the edition), and other works from the sketchbook as the twelve chapter frontispieces. as does the Tasmanian Historical Studies issue dedicated to Tasmanian Creativity and Innovation.

UNESCO Memory of the World listing Gould's Sketchbook of fishes was inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register at a ceremony in Hobart on 1 April 2011. This is the equivalent of a World Heritage listing for historic documentary material, recognising the sketchbook as a document of world significance. It was noted that the sketchbook contained the first record of a number of species. A spokesman for the CSIRO stated that current scientists still used information from the sketchbook, adding that little was known today about some of the species that Gould had drawn.