The Explorer

The Explorer

For those who have always suspected that ordinary holidays were never really going to be enough.

John Webber's portrait of Captain James Cook is one of the best-known images of the great eighteenth-century navigator, showing him in naval uniform with telescope in hand. Cook looks rather as though he has just discovered somewhere that needs investigating. Naturally, someone had to do it.

The original portrait

John Webber painted this portrait of Captain James Cook around 1780. Webber sailed with Cook on his third voyage and knew him well. Te Papa notes that the work is more likely to be a posthumous memorial portrait than a portrait painted from life, although it draws on studies Webber made before Cook's death in Hawai‘i in 1779. It is one of the important surviving images of Cook painted by an artist who knew him.

Portrait character: THE GENTLEMAN
Original artist: John Webber
Original date: c. 1780