John Webber's South Sea drawings for the admiralty: a newly discovered catalogue among the papers of Sir Joseph Banks

摘要

THE Department of Manuscripts in the British Library, a treasure-house of many little-knownworks of art which one might not expect to find there, preserves more than 150drawings and water-colours by the British artist John Webber (1750 93). The late MartinHardie, a connoisseur of the British water-colour school, praised Webber as a 'gooddraughtsman and a delicate colourist' but, in spite of this favourable view, Webber'swork has remained largely unknown to art historians and has never been properlyexamined. This may have been due to the fact that Webber's work requires ratherspecialized attention. Webber was the official draughtsman on Captain Cook's thirdvoyage to the Pacific (1776-80); this had a very direct bearing upon his development as anartist and on his choice of subject-matter. Webber was present when Cook discovered theSandwich Islands (Hawaii) and explored the north-west coast of America; for the periodof four years he recorded places which no artist before him had seen. It seems that theworks from this voyage exceed in number those which Webber produced during his latertravels in Great Britain and Europe.