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Lot description
John Webber (1751-1793) English, Photocopy Print "The Natche, a Ceremony in Honour of the King's Son, in Tongataboo". 18th-century engraving depicts the Natche ceremony, featuring a large assembly of people arranged in ritualistic rows and circles within a tropical landscape. Overall Size: 15 x 21 in. John Webber (1751 – 1793) was an English painter and draughtsman best known as the official artist on Captain James Cook’s third Pacific voyage (1776–1780), making him the first European artist to record scenes from places such as New Zealand, Alaska and the Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands through detailed sketches and watercolours. Born in London to a Swiss sculptor, he trained in Bern and at the Académie Royale in Paris before returning to England, where botanist Daniel Solander recommended him for Cook’s expedition; Webber produced numerous landscapes, ethnographic studies and portraits of peoples encountered on the journey, as well as some of the earliest European visual records of Pacific Island life. After returning to Britain he exhibited widely at the Royal Academy, was elected an associate in 1785 and a full member in 1791, and his engravings and paintings—especially his depictions of Cook and the South Seas—were widely circulated and influential in shaping European perceptions of the Pacific.