After John Webber
London
1784
Copper plate engraving
24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm) including archival mat
Provenance: Randy Nagatani, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi; Lahaina Printsellers, Maui, Hawaiʻi
A young Tahitian woman stands at the center of the plate behind a great bolt of tapa wound around her body and spread wide to either side, her arms resting along the upper edge and one hand raised to her cheek. The cloth falls in two deep scalloped swags at the front, each edged with fringe and worked with rows of stamped pattern, and it is tied at intervals with cord ending in tassels. Behind her the ground rises to hills at the left and palms lean in from the right, and her hair is dressed with small flowers.
The plate is lettered A YOUNG WOMAN of OTAHEITE, bringing a PRESENT beneath the image, with the draughtsman's credit at the lower left and the engraver's at the lower right. It was engraved after a drawing by John Webber, the official artist on James Cook's third voyage, and published in the atlas to the official account of that voyage, London, 1784. The presentation of a large piece of tapa wound about the body was a formal act of gift giving in Tahiti, and Webber recorded it from observation during the expedition's stay in the islands.
John Webber was born in London in 1751 and died there in 1793. He trained in Bern and Paris and was appointed draughtsman to Cook's third voyage in 1776, sailing on the Resolution and returning in 1780. He made the drawings from which the official atlas plates were engraved, and his images of Tahiti, Hawaiʻi, the Northwest Coast and Kamchatka became the standard European visual record of those places. He exhibited at the Royal Academy after his return and was elected a member in 1791.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
After John Webber
London
1784
Copper plate engraving
24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm) including archival mat
Provenance: Randy Nagatani, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi; Lahaina Printsellers, Maui, Hawaiʻi
A young Tahitian woman stands at the center of the plate behind a great bolt of tapa wound around her body and spread wide to either side, her arms resting along the upper edge and one hand raised to her cheek. The cloth falls in two deep scalloped swags at the front, each edged with fringe and worked with rows of stamped pattern, and it is tied at intervals with cord ending in tassels. Behind her the ground rises to hills at the left and palms lean in from the right, and her hair is dressed with small flowers.
The plate is lettered A YOUNG WOMAN of OTAHEITE, bringing a PRESENT beneath the image, with the draughtsman's credit at the lower left and the engraver's at the lower right. It was engraved after a drawing by John Webber, the official artist on James Cook's third voyage, and published in the atlas to the official account of that voyage, London, 1784. The presentation of a large piece of tapa wound about the body was a formal act of gift giving in Tahiti, and Webber recorded it from observation during the expedition's stay in the islands.
John Webber was born in London in 1751 and died there in 1793. He trained in Bern and Paris and was appointed draughtsman to Cook's third voyage in 1776, sailing on the Resolution and returning in 1780. He made the drawings from which the official atlas plates were engraved, and his images of Tahiti, Hawaiʻi, the Northwest Coast and Kamchatka became the standard European visual record of those places. He exhibited at the Royal Academy after his return and was elected a member in 1791.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
