It is proposed that a well-known and much-reproduced watercolour long held to show the Lyme Regis fossil dealer Mary Anning (1799–1847) in the field is most likely to be a sketch of Oxford geologist William Buckland (1784–1856). The artist, commonly said to be Anning’s friend Henry Thomas De la Beche (1796–1855), can be shown to be geologist and surveyor Thomas Sopwith (1803–1879). The location of the sketch is identified as the mountains of North Wales and not the Lyme Regis foreshore. The drawing dates from October 1841 when Buckland and Sopwith were on a tour of North Wales in search of glacial landforms.

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