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John Webber, the officially appointed artist for Captain James Cook’s
third voyage of discovery around the Pacific (1776-1780), along with
William Ellis, surgeon’s second mate on the Discovery,
provided perhaps the most comprehensive and unprecedented visual
record of any of Cook’s voyages.
After leaving England, Webber and Ellis drew and painted the Kerguelen
Islands in the far southern Indian Ocean, and Adventure Bay in
Van Diemen’s Land (renamed Tasmania in 1855), before moving
on to Tonga and Tahiti, then the northwest coast of America, the
Unalaska Islands and Siberia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, before
returning along the coasts of Southeast Asia. The two artists made
drawings and watercolour paintings of everything that came within
their ambit, creating the first accurate ethnographic record of
Pacific culture.
Webber had clearly lived up to Captain Cook’s wishes upon
setting out on the journey:
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Mr Webber was pitched upon, and engaged
to embark with me, for the express purpose of supplying the unavoidable
imperfections of written accounts, by enabling us to preserve, and
to bring home, such drawings of the most memorable scenes of our
transactions, as could be expected by a professed and skilled artist. |
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