The Royal Academy's collection of Philip Reinagle drawings includes many studies of shells. An inscription on one of the sheets suggest that some of them were drawn from items in the collection of Sir Ashton Lever. Reinagle was certainly familiar with Lever and in 1786 exhibited at the Royal Academy a painting of hummingbirds from his collection.

Lever began to collect sea shells around 1760. He bought a large consignment from a ship at Dunkirk and with these formed the core of a natural history collection which eventually included fossils and both live and stuffed birds. The collection was was published in George Shaw's Museum Leverianum, containing Select Specimens from the Museum of the late Sir Ashton Lever, Kt.', 1792-96 which included a large number of hand-coloured engraved plates by Reinagle and other artists.

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