Painters & Paintings

While Joseph Banks used classical similes to describe Tahiti in his journal, none of the draughtsmen in his service—Buchan, Parkinson and Spöring—were trained to draw figures in the ‘correct’ proportions of classical sculpture. As a result, their drawings of the people and scenes Banks describes are at odds with the journal.

When John Hawkesworth engaged artists to design and engrave the illustrations for his account of Cook’s voyage, he chose Giovanni Battista Cipriani and Francesco Bartolozzi. Cipriani and his friend Bartolozzi, both originally from Florence, came to England in 1755 and became founding members of the Royal Academy when it was established in 1768. Inheritors of a long-standing academic tradition that made few concessions to the need for scientifically accurate records of expeditions, Cipriani’s Rococo Classicism was used to ‘improve’ the drawings of Parkinson et al in much the same way that Hawkesworth ‘improved’ Cook’s journal.

Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815)
after Giovanni Battista Cipriani (1727–1785)
after Sydney Parkinson (1745?–1771)
[A View of the Inside of a House in the Island of Ulietea, with the Representation of a Dance to the Music of the Country]
London: 1773
engraving; plate mark 21.2 x 30.1 cm
Pictorial Collection S1691

Drawing strongly on the conventions of Istoria or history painting, Mortimer celebrates the achievements of Cook’s first Pacific voyage. Cook, at the centre of the composition, gestures towards the new discoveries he has made across the seas. On the left of the painting sits Joseph Banks, with Daniel Solander standing behind him. The figure at the right of the composition is John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich and First Lord of the Admiralty, under whose orders Cook had sailed.

Banks sits upon a grassy bank, a reference to both his name and his passion for botany and natural history. The Earl leans upon a symbol of the classical past—regarded as the origin and cornerstone of British culture—which serves to emphasise his authority and position in society, while Cook indicates the glorious future made possible by British scientific advancement.

John Hamilton Mortimer (1741–1779)
[Captain James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Sandwich, and Two Others] 1771?
oil on canvas; 120 x 166 cm
Pictorial Collection R10630

When Joseph Banks abandoned his plan to accompany James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific, the artists he intended to take with him—the well-known German artist Johann Zoffany and three topographical artists (James Miller, John Frederick Miller and John Cleveley)—were also withdrawn from the voyage. In their place, the Admiralty board appointed William Hodges, landscape painter.

Unlike the artists of the first voyage, Hodges was to be directly under Cook’s orders. Early in the voyage Hodges was occupied with coastal profiles and tutoring a number of the midshipmen in topographic drawing. As the voyage progressed he showed a growing interest in recording atmospheric phenomena. Painting through the windows of the great cabin on the Resolution, Hodges was practising a form of ‘plein airism’ that would not become fashionable until the nineteenth century, when it would herald a transformation in western art.

The tropical character of Tahiti and the Society Islands generally presented Hodges with an entirely new set of visual problems, and his response was to concentrate on the portrayal of atmosphere, light and colour, subordinating detail to general effect. Despite the spontaneity and immediacy of effect Hodges achieves in so many of his paintings, a number of them were executed back in England, presumably from sketches taken on the spot. This painting appears to be one of those sketches, as another version of the work was presented to the Admiralty by Hodges in 1776 in fulfilment of his commission. It is now held by the National Maritime Museum in Britain.

William Hodges (1744–1797)
View from Point Venus, Island of Otaheite c.1774
oil on canvas; 29.2 x 39.4 cm
Pictorial Collection R8849

William Hodges (1744–1797)
A Man of Tahiti with Long Hair August 1773?
chalk drawing; 54.7 x 37.5 cm
Pictorial Collection R756

Of the wonderful series of portraits of Tahitians produced by Hodges, this portrait of Tu—or Otoo as the British called him—is regarded as the best. Tu was the leading chieftain of the Pare region of Tahiti, which lay adjacent to Matavai Bay. His reputation as a ‘timorous prince’ had been earned during the visit of the Endeavour in 1769, when he had refused to meet with Cook. However, with the assistance of a succession of British ships, and via his own considerable ambition, he later succeeded in uniting the whole of the Society Islands under his own rule as Pomare I. The Pomare dynasty lasted for 70 years before the French annexed the Islands group, and was even able to maintain its social and ritual roles for another 40 years after that.

William Hodges (1744–1797)
Otoo, King of Otaheite [i.e. Tahiti] August? 1773
chalk drawing; 54 x 37.8 cm
Pictorial Collection R755

In this portrait Hodges has used details of the costume and ornaments of his sitter—not as items typical of a certain society, but rather as indicators of the particular rank and role in society of an individual. In his published account of his voyage in the Pacific, George Forster writes:

‘In the morning we were to the south of Cape Kidnappers, and advanced to the Black Cape. After breakfast three canoes set off from this part of the shore, where some level land appeared at the foot of the mountains. They soon came on board as we were not very far from the land, and in one of them was a chief, who came on deck without hesitation. He was a tall middle-aged man, clothed in two new and elegant dresses, made of the New Zealand flag or flax-plant. His hair was dressed in the highest fashion of the country, tied on the crown, oiled and stuck with white feathers. In each ear he wore a piece of albatross skin with its white down, and his face was punctured in spirals and curved lines. Mr Hodges drew his portrait …’

William Hodges (1744–1797)
Portrait of a Maori Chieftain October 1773
chalk drawing; 54.3 x 37.4 cm
Pictorial Collection R747

William Hodges (1744–1797)
[Portrait of Tynai-mai, Princess of Raiatea] c.1773
chalk drawing; 54.3 x 37.2 cm
Pictorial Collection R739

William Hodges (1744-1797)
Tongatabu or Amsterdam
watercolour; 42.5 x 59.9 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK143
Pictorial Collection T1924

William Woollett, engraver (1735–1785)
after William Hodges (1744–1797)
The Fleet of Otaheite Assembled at Oparee
London: Wm. Strahan & Thos. Cadell, 1 February 1777
engraving; plate mark 24.7 x 39.5 cm
Pictorial Collection S1715

Hodges’ ‘Landing’ paintings, unlike his other work relating to the voyage, were designed and painted according to the conventions of history painting then fashionable in England. These conventions drew upon attitudes, compositions and costumes borrowed from classical sculpture and the masters of Italian painting, although the innovation of including contemporary costume gained increasing acceptance through the works of Benjamin West.

Depicting the first European contact with Pacific Islanders, Hodges’ paintings, and the engravings made from them to illustrate Cook’s second voyage journal, contain all the drama—the tension, confrontation and danger—one would expect in the making of history. Cook, determined to take the public presentation of his second Pacific voyage into his own hands, rewrote his journal a number of times throughout the voyages, perfecting an account of which he would be the hero. Hodges, a great admirer of Cook and well aware of the historical importance of his discoveries, has created the illustrations to support Cook’s heroic role.

John Keyes Sherwin, engraver (1751–1790)
after William Hodges (1744–1797)
The Landing at Tanna One of the New Hebrides
London: Wm. Strahan & Thos. Cadell, 1 February 1777
engraving; 23.5 x 47.3 cm
Pictorial Collection S1720

Omai, a Savage in London

Unknown engraver
Omiah the Indian from Otaheite Presented to Their Majesties at Kew by Mr Banks & Dr Solander,
July 17, 1774
London: 1774?
engraving; 11.1 x 13.9 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK10666
Pictorial Collection U5390

John Raphael Smith, engraver (1752–1812)
after Benjamin West (1738–1820)
Mr Banks
London: S. Hooper, J.R. Smith, 15 April 1773
mezzotint; 62 x 38 cm
Pictorial Collection S7817

John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718–1792) succeeded to the peerage at the age of eleven. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he undertook a tour of the Continent and on his return to England in 1739, took up his seat in the House of Lords. Sandwich began his long association with the Admiralty in December 1744, when he was appointed a lord commissioner. He was First Lord of the Admiralty from 1763 to 1765. During this time his role in the prosecution of John Wilkes—a former associate—for both seditious and obscene libel, earned him the nickname ‘Jemmy Twitcher’, after the character in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera who ‘peaches’ his friend and fellow villain, MacHeath.

In 1771 Sandwich was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and during the 11 years of his tenure the vast patronage of his office was used for bribery and political jobbery in the interests of his political party. The Parliamentary Report of 1783–4 revealed that while the dock-yards had been sinks of iniquity before Sandwich’s time, they were never so utterly bad as during the War of American Independence. However, Sandwich was also a great supporter of Cook’s Pacific exploration, and supplied Admiralty funds for the purchase and fit-out of the Resolution, Adventure and Discovery. Cook named the Sandwich Islands, discovered in 1778, in his honour.

At the height of his unpopularity, Sandwich’s mistress of 16 years, Martha Ray, was murdered by a clergyman who had wished to marry her. When it became public knowledge that Sandwich, then in his sixty-sixth year, had openly cohabited with Ray the outburst of indignation damaged his standing even further. In March 1782, with the fall of the British government under Lord North, he effectively retired from public life.

This pencil drawing is a study for a larger portrait painted by Reynolds in 1775 or 1776. The image is a rare example of Reynolds’ preliminary drawings, as the artist preferred to work in oils directly onto the canvas. There is an oil sketch of Omai in the Yale University Collection, but the finished oil portrait bears a much closer resemblance to the pencil drawing. It has been suggested that Reynolds may have done the oil sketch first and, dissatisfied with the results, turned to the pencil to achieve a better likeness.

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792)
Omai of the Friendly Isles 1774?
pencil drawing; 26.5 x 20 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK9670
Pictorial Collection T2711

Joshua Reynolds was one of the most sought-after portraitists of his day and his clientele were the rich, the aristocratic and the famous. In 1776 he exhibited two full-length portraits at the Royal Academy exhibition. One portrait was of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, regarded by her contemporaries as an ‘Empress of fashion’. The other, of identical size, was a portrait of Omai attired in the ‘habit of his country’.

The portrait of Omai was later engraved by Johann Jacobé and widely circulated. While portraits of Omai were commissioned from other artists, it appears that the Reynolds portrait was not a commission, as it was still in the artist’s studio in 1796. On a number of occasions Reynolds had portrayed famous people so that an engraving could be produced to satisfy public curiosity, and it is possible that his portrait of Omai was undertaken for this reason also. Whatever the motive, the portrait is regarded as one of Reynolds’ finest.

Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820)
Papers 1745-1820
Things intended for Omai
manuscript list: 22.5 x 18.5 cm
Manuscript Collection MS9/14

Samuel William Reynolds, engraver (1773–1835)
after Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792)
Sir Joseph Banks, Bart.
London: Hodgson, Boys & Graves, 1834
mezzotint; plate mark 12.9 x 9.9 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK1715
Pictorial Collection U6304

William Hodges was appointed official voyage artist for Cook’s second Pacific voyage, leaving England on board the Resolution in 1772. Admiralty orders stated that Cook should ensure that Hodges ‘diligently employ himself in making Drawings of Paintings of such Places as you may touch at that may be worthy of notice in the course of your voyage as also of such other Objects and things as may fall within the Compass of his Abilities’.

In addition to the innovative oil paintings of landscapes Hodges executed during the voyage, he also produced a large number of chalk portraits of the men and women of the islands he visited. A number of the portraits, including one of Omai, were engraved for publication on his return to England.

The deaths of Cook and Omai

John Cleveley was chosen as one of the natural-history draughtsmen to accompany Joseph Banks on Cook’s second Pacific voyage. When the alterations Banks had made to the Resolution to accommodate his party were removed—they had made the vessel unseaworthy—he withdrew from the voyage. Cleveley never did travel to the Pacific, but his brother James, who was enlisted as a carpenter on the Resolution for Cook’s third voyage, is said to have made drawings which his brother John used as the basis of this painting.

John Cleveley (c.1745–1786)
Morea [i.e. Moorea] One of the Friendly Islands in the South Seas, 1777
watercolour; 51.3 x 69 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK2847
Pictorial Collection T2810

The rich pictorial record of Cook’s first two voyages to the Pacific clearly established the value of taking artists on voyages of exploration. When plans for the third voyage were announced, the question was not whether an artist should be included amongst the crew, but rather who it should be. It was Daniel Solander who proposed John Webber, a young artist of Swiss extraction who had recently returned to England after studying art in Berne and Paris.

Webber received his appointment from the Admiralty on 24 June 1776 and sailed from Plymouth on the Resolution on 12 July. The terms of his commission, almost identical to those for Hodges four years earlier stated:

‘Whereas we have engaged Mr John Webber Draughtsman and Landskip Painter to proceed in His Majesty’s Sloop under your Command on her present intended voyage, in order to make Drawings and Paintings of such places in the Countries you may touch at in the course of the said Voyage as may be proper to give a more perfect Idea thereof than can be formed by written descriptions only; You are hereby required and directed to receive the said Mr John Webber on board giving him all proper assistance, Victualling him as the Sloop’s company, and taking care that he does diligently employ himself in making Drawings or Paintings of such places as you may touch at, that may be worthy of notice, in the course of your Voyage, as also such other objects and things as may fall within the compass of His abilities.’

John Keyes Sherwin, engraver (1751–1790)
after John Webber (1752–1793)
A Dance in Otaheite
London: 1784
engraving; plate mark 26.5 x 41 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK10975/4
Pictorial Collection U1244

Returning from Unalaska to winter in Hawaii, Cook sighted the island on 26 November 1778. For the next seven weeks he sailed around the islands of Maui and Hawaii, looking for a suitable place to land and trading with the canoes that sailed out to them from the shore. Finally, on 17 January 1779, during the festival of makahiki, the Resolution and Discovery entered Kealakekua Bay and were greeted by huge crowds—Cook estimated up to 800 canoes filled the bay—and it is at this point that Cook’s journal stops.

James King’s journal relates the ‘long and tiresome ceremony’ that Cook was honoured with on shore which included making offerings, wrapping Cook in a red cloth, addressing him as Lono and desiring him to prostrate himself and kiss an image of a god, which it appears he did. Afterwards, ‘two men with wands went before the Captain repeating the same word as before (Lono), & on which all prostrated themselves.’

The exact meaning of this ceremony has been hotly debated ever since, with many observers at the scene, and subsequent readers of the voyage journals, believing that it acknowledged Cook as an incarnation of the god Lono. A number of commentators saw Cook’s death less than a month later at the hands of the Hawaiians as a punishment from God for his presumption in allowing himself to be honoured thus. Others have questioned whether this interpretation might not be yet another example of Eurocentric presumption of superiority.

John Webber (1752–1793)
A Chief of the Sandwich Islands 1787
oil on canvas; 147.3 x 114.4 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK1
Pictorial Collection T265

John Webber (1752–1793)
[A Portrait of Poedua] c.1782
oil on canvas; 144.7 x 93.5 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK5192
Pictorial Collection T520

John Rickman, second lieutenant on the Discovery, kept a journal of his voyage which he later published anonymously. Omai is a major figure in his narrative of events, but as he could not have witnessed a number of the incidents he relates, and reveals a tendency to exaggerate and embroider, his accuracy must be questioned.

A few days after the Discovery and Resolution arrived at Tahiti, the two remaining horses carried to the Pacific by Cook were exercised by Omai and one of the officers amid scenes of ‘Uproar and confusion’. In Rickman’s account Omai, dressed in the suit of armour given to him by Lord Sandwich and wielding both pistol and pike, is likened to St. George ‘going to kill the dragon’.

attributed to John Rickman
Journal of Captain Cook's Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean on Discovery: Performed in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, Illustrated with Cuts, and a Chart, Shewing the Tracts of the Ships Employed in This Expedition. Faithfully Narrated from the Original MS
London: Printed for E. Newbery, 1781
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK 5094

The importance of discoveries made during Cook’s three Pacific voyages was seen to transcend national rivalries, and translations of his voyage accounts and publications of his maps brought his achievements, and news of his death, to a wide audience.

Claude-Mathieu Fessard, engraver (b.1740)
after John Webber (1752–1793)
Mort tragique du Capitaine Cook, le 15 février, 1779, sur la côte d’Owhy-hee, l’une des Isles Sandwich, découverte par ce navigateur
Paris: 178-?
engraving; 28.4 x 32.5 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK6565
Pictorial Collection U1190

[Samples of tapa cloth mounted in a book entitled: Patterns of South Sea Cloth] 1769–1779?
album of tapa cloth samples; 5 x 9.8 cm or smaller
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK10696
Pictorial Collection A40007308

Epilogue

In December 1785, taking advantage of the huge public interest in Cook and the Pacific, the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden presented the pantomime OMAI: Or, A Trip Round the World. A mix of farce, topical satire, mime, song, dance, romance, commedia dell’arte and theatrical tableaux, the pantomime used the places visited by Cook as the setting for an improbable story in which Omai has to win the hand of the fair Londina and reclaim his rightful throne.

With ‘authentic’ costumes, stage designs and extraordinary special effects by the artist Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, the production was considered by its audience to be ‘a beautiful illustration of Cook’s Voyages—an illustration of importance to the mature mind of an adult, and delightful to the tender capacity of an infant’. An early example of ‘infotainment’, the play was a huge success with 70 performances in 1785 and 86.

Unknown artist
A Man of the Sandwich Islands with His Helmet 1830?
watercolour; 75 x 51 cm.
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK1224/1
Pictorial Collection T3334

Copyright: