In 1833 the Beagle returned Jemmy to Tierra del Fuego. The reunion revealed the scale of what had been lost: he could barely communicate with his own people. Darwin, witness to the scene, noted that it was almost laughable, yet painful, to hear him speak to his brother in English and then ask him in Spanish, “¿no sabe?” (“don’t you know?”). This painting depicts that moment: on the left, the brother; on the right, Jemmy, in a suit and white gloves, gesturing in a language they no longer share.
Unlike the previous paintings, the image does not derive from the European canon but from its contemporary successor: a still from The Voyage of Charles Darwin, the series the BBC devoted to the naturalist’s journey in 1978. No Fuegian record exists of the loss of the language; the scene survives only as told by the English, dramatised by their television. Repainted in oil at a minimal, almost postcard-like scale, the still closes the series where it began: a Patagonian story that can only be narrated through the other’s images.
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