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Cook & Omai: The Cult of the South Seas 15 February - 27 May 2001 Exhibition Gallery Introduction Merchandise In 1774, the first Polynesian to visit London travelled to England with the crew of Captain Cook's second Pacific voyage and became an overnight sensation. Seen as a living example of the 'Noble Savage', Omai as he was known, was discussed by scientists and philosophers, celebrated in all the best circles and written about in everything from poetry to pornography. He proved a lightning rod for European anxieties regarding imperialism, civilisation and the true nature of mankind. The artistic and literary legacy of Omai's encounter with Europe provides a fascinating insight into European culture in a moment of transition, when old certainties were collapsing and new ones were yet to form. Cook & Omai: The Cult of the South Seas has been developed by the National Library of Australia in association with the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University. The exhibition draws extensively on the Library's magnificent Rex Nan Kivell Collection and includes significant loans from the Australian Museum, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery and the State Library of New South Wales. Home | Introduction | The truest picture of an arcadia | A Noble Savage in London | The deaths of Cook and Omai | Epilogue The truest picture of an arcadia (of which we were going to be kings) In 1766 the British Admiralty took up the search for the Southern Continent officially, sending out Captain Samuel Wallis in the Dolphin, accompanied by Philip Carteret in the unseaworthy Swallow. On entering the Pacific, bad weather separated the two ships. Wallis’ secret instructions were: ‘to discover and obtain a complete knowledge of the Land or Islands supposed to be situated in the Southern Hemisphere’. On 18 June 1767 the sailors saw a mountain covered with cloud and supposing it to be the Southern Continent, discovered instead the island of Tahiti. The most extensive British account of the discovery is provided by George Robinson, master of the Dolphin, who wrote: ‘…The country hade the most Beautiful appearance its posabel to Imagin, from the shore side one two and three miles Back there is a fine Leavel country that appears to be all laid out in plantations, and the regular built Houses seems to be without number, all allong the Coast, they appeared lyke long Farmers Barns and seemd to be all very neatly thatched, with Great Numbers of Coca Nut Trees and several oyr trees that we could not know the name of all allong the shore – the Interior part of the country is very Mountainous but there is beautiful valeys between the Mountains – from the foot of the Mountains half way up the Country appears to be all fine pasture land, except a few places which seemd to be plowed or dug up for planting or sowing some sort of seed – from that to the very topes of the Mountains is all full of tall trees but what sort they are I know not but the whole was Green. This appears to be the most populoss country I ever saw, the whole shore side was lined with men, women and children all the way that we Saild allong.’ Samuel
Wallis (1728–1795) On 24 June 1767 as the Dolphin warped into Matavai Bay, the Tahitians came out in their canoes and pelted the vessel with stones. Wallis replied with cannons. The next day an armed party went ashore to plant the British pendant and take formal possession of the island, naming it King George the Third’s Island. Two days later two fleets of canoes converged on the Dolphin, while armed warriors made for the watering party on shore. Wallis ordered the crew to fire on the approaching canoes, which immediately withdrew, and then the guns were turned on shore. The warriors there fled to a hill overlooking the bay, which was already crowded with women and children. The Dolphin fired four devastating shots at the hill. Omai would later claim to have been one of the many casualties. That afternoon, after the ship’s carpenters had destroyed all the canoes they could find, the Tahitians sued for peace, bringing gifts of food and cloth and giving access to their young women. The Dolphin’s sick went ashore to recuperate, and the trading began. Unknown
artist Louis-Antoine de Bougainville first sighted Tahiti on 2 April 1768, less than ten months after the island was claimed for the British crown by Samuel Wallis. Unaware of the Dolphin’s visit, Bougainville drew up an Act of Possession and named the island Nouvelle Cythère, after the Peloponnesian island of Kithira near which Aphrodite was said to have risen from the sea. Bougainville wrote of his brief visit ‘Several times I went on inland walks. I felt as though I had been transported to the Garden of Eden … Everywhere reigned hospitality, peace, joy, and every appearance of happiness.’ With his two ships in a poor anchorage Bougainville prepared to leave Tahiti on 16 April. With him he carried Aoutourou (Ahu-Toru) who would become the first Tahitian to visit Europe, and whose information about Tahitian society would temper Bougainville’s enthusiastic account of the island. In his introduction to the published account of his voyage Bougainville sought to pre-empt the disbelief of his readers: I am a voyager and a seaman; that is a liar and a stupid fellow, in the eyes of that class of indolent haughty writers, who in their closets reason in infinitum on the world and its inhabitants, and with an air of superiority, confine nature within the limits of their own invention … and only write and reason upon the observations which they have borrowed from those same travellers in whom they deny the faculty of seeing and thinking. Unknown
artist Cook first sighted New Zealand on 8 October 1769, and in the following days as the Endeavour sailed along the coast a number of Maori canoes approached to challenge or barter. A week later Sydney Parkinson described the approach of nine canoes: in which were one hundred and sixty of the natives: they behaved in a very irresolute manner, sometimes seeming as if they would attack us; then taking fright (Cook had fired a four pound load of grape shot a little wide of one canoe on the previous day), and retreating a little … shaking their lances and bone bludgeons at us, talking very loud and blustering, lolling out their tongues and making other signs of defiance. The drawing Parkinson made of this encounter, New Zealand War Canoe Bidding Defiance to the Ship, shows a cloaked man holding a battle-axe of very similar appearance to this tewhatewha which is one of three items in the Library’s possession thought to have been collected by Banks in New Zealand. Unknown
maker 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) 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) 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) William
Hodges (1744–1797) 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) 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) William
Hodges (1744–1797) William
Hodges (1744-1797) William
Woollett, engraver (1735–1785) 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 Erramanga, One of the New Hebrides London: Wm. Strahan & Thos. Cadell, 1 February 1777 engraving; plate mark 28.8 x 48.5 cm Pictorial Collection S1719 John
Keyes Sherwin, engraver (1751–1790) Home | Introduction | The truest picture of an arcadia | A Noble Savage in London | The deaths of Cook and Omai | Epilogue Omai arrived at Portsmouth on 14 July 1774 as a crew-member on board HMS Adventure, captained by Tobias Furneaux. Taken immediately to meet Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, he was then placed in the care of Joseph Banks and Dr Solander, both of whom he claimed to remember from their visit to Tahiti five years earlier. Three days later, on 17 July, he was presented to King George III and Queen Charlotte at Kew. It was at this introduction that Omai would reveal the grace and ‘natural’ good manners that first astounded and then delighted his audience. Once approved by the highest in the land, Omai’s career as a ‘social lion’ was assured. Unknown
engraver John
Raphael Smith, engraver (1752–1812) 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. Valentine
Green, engraver (1739–1813)
after Johann Zoffany (1733–1810) John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, Viscount Hinchingbrook [sic], First Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty London: Valentine Green, 30 August 1774 mezzotint; plate mark 51.5 x 35.3 cm Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK275 Pictorial Collection U7553 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) 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. Johann
Jacobe, engraver (1733–1797)
after Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) Omai, a Native of the Island of Utietea [i.e. Ulietea] London: John Boydell, 1 September 1780 mezzotint; plate mark 63 x 38.4 cm U6876 NK4832 Sir
Joseph Banks (1743-1820) Samuel
William Reynolds, engraver (1773–1835) 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. James
Caldwall, engraver Home | Introduction | The truest picture of an arcadia | A Noble Savage in London | The deaths of Cook and Omai | Epilogue 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) 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
Webber (1752–1793)
A View in Matavai, Otaheite London: J. Webber, 1 February 1787 engraving; plate mark 29.3 x 43 cm aquatint by Marie Catherina Prestel (1747–1794) Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK467/C Pictorial Collection U1181 John
Keyes Sherwin, engraver (1751–1790) 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. Samuel
Middiman, engraver (1750–1831)
after John Webber (1752–1793) An Offering before Capt. Cook in the Sandwich Islands London: 1784 hand-coloured engraving; plate mark 26 x 41 cm Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK5630 Pictorial Collection U1182 John
Webber (1752–1793) John
Webber (1752–1793) 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 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) [Samples
of tapa cloth mounted in a book entitled: Patterns of South Sea Cloth]
1769–1779? Home | Introduction | The truest picture of an arcadia | A Noble Savage in London | The deaths of Cook and Omai | 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. [Playbill
for the 44th performance of OMAI: Or, A Trip Round the World] Intended as the greatest blockbuster pantomime of the eighteenth century, OMAI: Or, A Trip Round the World opened at Covent Garden Theatre in December 1785. OMAI displayed the combined production talents of set designer and special effects expert Philippe de Loutherbourg, playwright John O’Keeffe, musical composer William Shield and scene painter John Webber, plus at least four other ‘artistic gentlemen’. De Loutherbourg was most responsible for imbuing OMAI’s farcical plot with a powerful overlay of geographic and ethnographic realism. A member of both the French and English art academies, the Alsatian-born painter had already produced lavish set designs for 30 London pantomimes. De Loutherbourg possessed a landscape painter’s talent for rendering vivid naturalistic scenes, combined with an engineer’s understanding of the mechanics of illusion—including depth of field, clockwork movement, realistic automata and dynamic light and sound effects. The Times reported that de Loutherbourg had employed John Webber, artist on Cook’s third voyage, to advise on ‘native’ costumes and to paint occasional scenes. It also appears that he may have purchased some of Webber’s examples of ‘Otaheitea dresses’. The newspaper review praised the pantomime’s scenic authenticity, but the designs owe a great deal to perceptions of the exotic and the demands of the stage. Philippe
Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740–1812) Philippe
Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740–1812) Philippe
Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740–1812) Philippe
Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740–1812) Philippe
Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740–1812) Philippe
Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740–1812) A. Courcell
Antoine
Phelippeaux, engraver (1767–c.1830) The apparent ease with which the Tahitians obtained their daily bread—needing only to pluck the fruit of the bread fruit tree—was remarked upon by both Banks and Cook in 1769. Could this wonderful plant be put to some commercial use? Banks thought so, and on 23 December 1787 the Bounty, under Captain William Bligh, sailed from Portsmouth under orders to collect specimens of the tree for propagation in the West Indies. With the slaves freed from the necessity of growing their own food, their owners could maximise the profits gained from their labour. Due to a series of delays, the Bounty spent five months in Tahiti and many of the crew established relationships with the women on the island. Bligh would later blame the mutiny that broke out in April 1789 on the attractions exerted by the charms of these women, and the comfortable lives his men enjoyed with them. The tale of the mutiny on the Bounty, filled with danger and passion, feats of endurance, disobedience, punishment and death, transfixed the British public, who eagerly bought Thomas Gosse’s strangely beautiful print. The huge success Gosse’s mezzotint enjoyed tempted him to produce another on an equally topical subject, the new thief colony in New South Wales. Founding of the Settlement of Port-Jackson [i.e. Port Jackson] at Botany Bay in New South Wales, however, was not considered uplifting and did not sell. Gosse abandoned printmaking and became a painter of portrait miniatures in the provincial towns of England. Thomas
Gosse (1765-1844) When Omai returned to the Pacific in 1776, many felt that the failure to convert him to Christianity was an important opportunity missed. In 1795 The London Missionary Society was established, and plans to send a group of missionaries to Tahiti were made. 18 missionaries, five accompanied by their wives, sailed for Tahiti with Captain James Wilson in the Duff. In March 1797 King Pomare granted them the use of land at Matavai Bay for their mission. The London Missionary Society commissioned Robert Smirke to commemorate the event in an oil painting that was displayed as part of a fund-raising drive in England. To raise further money, this engraving by Bartolozzi was produced in two versions—a hand-coloured aquatint and a less expensive monochrome format. The ceremony depicted was intended as a gesture of hospitality and an invitation to make use of the land in return for both the use of the missionaries’ goods and their services in war. It was not a grant in perpetuity, as the missionaries believed. The mission started successfully but tensions rose on both sides when the missionaries tried to stop the trade in arms and intervened in a feud between Pomare and his son. All but seven of the missionaries left for Sydney in 1799, with the remainder following in 1809. Francesco
Bartolozzi (1727–1815) The Rev. John Williams’ collection of 30 large watercolours relative to the South Seas, of which this striking image is one, was used on lecture tours by Rev. Williams and his ministers in Britain when raising funds for the London Missionary Society. A number of the images are copied from Cook’s and William Ellis’ accounts. Rev. Williams was killed at Erromanga in 1839. Unknown
artist Home | Introduction | The truest picture of an arcadia | A Noble Savage in London | The deaths of Cook and Omai | Epilogue |