Lot 111
  • 111

(Cook, Captain James)

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Description

Cleverley, John.  [View of Owhyee (one of the Sandwich Islands) including a faithful Representation of the Death of Captain Cook, together with the Situation of his Majesty's Ships the Resolution and Discovery in the Bay, firing on the Natives, as related in several Narratives of that fatal Event ….], handcolored aquatint (approx. 17 x 23  1/4  in; 432 x 590 mm) after a drawing by John Cleverley based on a sketch by his brother James Cleveley, engraved by Francis Jukes; few small spots, generally not affecting image.  Matted, glazed and framed, 18th c. frame backing present (not examined out of frame).   

Provenance

Regent King Charles of the Belgians (with his inked stamp on the frame backing and on the frame)

Literature

Joppien & Smith, III, p.220, cf Forbes 143

Catalogue Note

A superbly colored copy of Cleverley's depiction of the death of Captain Cook, from the collection of the Regent King Charles of the Belgians. 

Although the attribution of this image to Cleverley has been questioned, it is generally believed that it originated with James Cleverley, an eye-witness to Cook's death, who was a ship's carpenter on the Resolution on Cook's third voyage.  The scene was then refined and drawn by his brother John and expertly engraved by Jukes.  The print is one of four views of the South Seas originally issued together by Thomas Martyn.  The four views, and especially the Cook print,  "may be read as a new development in the imagery of cultural contact …. It is the excitement in the voyage itself that is being celebrated in the Cleverley drawings, the voyage from the point of view of the men who manned the ships, a kind of British broadsheet art that was eminently suited to begin the preparation of the nation for its great nineteenth-century imperial adventure.  But it was not, paradoxically, an outward-looking art, that sought to embrace the strange; no longer an art of information or curiosity …. Topographical art had begun to turn inward upon itself to enjoy, perhaps a little self-indulgently, the personal excitements of the imperial adventure" (Joppien & Smith).