Lot 36
Webber, John (1751/2-1793)
[Views in the South Seas]
£40,200
Auction: 19 September 2024 from 10:00 BST
Description
London: J. Webber, No. 312 Oxford Street, 1788-92. 16 soft-ground etched plates with grey and sepia wash (sheet size 56.9 x 39cm, plate size 44.5 x 32.5cm), each signed ‘J. Webber’ in the plate, on wove paper watermarked J Whatman (without dates), most with tissue-guards, without text as issued [Beddie 1871; cf. Abbey Travel 595 & Beddie 1869-70 & 1872, Tooley 501].
Bound with an extensive set of the engraved plates from James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 1784. 65 in total (of 87), including folding general map (numbered 1), one other folding chart (36), Death of Cook plate (unnumbered), and plates numbered 4, 6-8, 10-11, 13-18, 20-23, 25-30, 31, 33, 35, 38-43, 45-52, 54, 56-58, 60-68, and 70-78, occasional spotting to margins, heavier and more widespread spotting to chart (36), Death of Cook plate and plate 78, plate 21 tissue-guard ripped, many tissue-guards adhering at points to verso of facing plate.
Binding: contemporary red half morocco, spine lettered in gilt ('Prints to Cook & King's Voyage'), marbled sides, light wear to extremities
Provenance
Glasgow Philosophical Society (ink-stamp to verso of folding chart).
Footnote
The extremely rare true first edition of John Webber's spectacular suite of views from Cook's third and final voyage, apparently the only complete copy ever offered at auction, depicting scenes in New Zealand, Macao, Krakatoa, Kamchatka, Tahiti, Moorea, and Pulo Condore in what is now Vietnam.
Webber was the official draughtsman on the voyage and issued these 16 views privately during the years leading up to his death. Whereas his drawings for Cook and King's Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, published in 1784, had been engraved by other artists, for Views in the South Seas he learnt the soft-ground etching process in order to make the plates himself. The work has consequently been identified as one of the first works in the now revered tradition of illustrated accounts of exotic lands by artists who were involved in every stage of the production process, exemplified by the Daniells' Oriental Scenery (1795-1814): these artists ‘saw the sights, drew the pictures and worked them up, then back in Europe carried out the processes of plate preparation, and supervised the printing and colouring. This elimination of all intermediaries gave these works immediacy and vastly improved accuracy' (Gerstle & Milner, eds., Recovering the Orient, 1994, pp. 118-19). In 1808 Webber's views were republished by Boydell with the addition of hand-colouring and text, and with Boydell's imprint on each plate.
A copy of Webber's edition containing 15 of the 16 plates was offered at Christie's, 8 April 2009, and a set of 12 loose plates appeared at Sotheby's in 1960. The Abbey collection contained a copy of Boydell's edition only. Beddie's Bibliography of Captain James Cook (2nd ed., 1970) describes under catalogue number 1870 a copy containing ‘16 hand-coloured plates bound together … [showing] the same views as in the Boydell edition … arranged in a different order’.
The views, here bound in a slightly different order from that of Boydell's edition, comprise:
The Narta, or Sledge for Burdens in Kamtchatka.
A Sailing Canoe of Otahaite.
View in Queen Charlottes Sound, New Zealand.
Waheiadooa, Chief of Oheitepeha, lying in State.
A View in Oheitepeha Bay, in the Island of Otaheite.
Boats of the Friendly Islands.
View of the Harbour of Taloo, in the Island of Eimeo.
A Toopapaoo of a Chief, with a Priest making his offering to the Morai, in Huoheine.
The Resolution beating through the Ice, with the Discovery in the most eminent danger in the distance.
Balagans or Summer Habitations, with the method of Drying Fish at St Peter & St Paul, Kamtschatka.
A View in the Island of Pulo Condore.
A View in the Island of Cracatoa.
View in Macao.
View in Macao, including the Residence of Camoens.
The Plantain Tree, in the Island of Cracatoa.
The Fan Palm, in the Island of Cracatoa.
