[Bound with:] LAURIE (Robert). The Poa: From the Bird which was brought from New Zeeland by Capt Cook, in his late Voyage round the World and which Obtained of the Society of the Society of Arts, a Premium of 30 Guineas ...
First edition. Coloured mezzotint with wide margins measuring 485 by 335mm, plate mark 360 by 255mm. Some spotting and toning. London, No.1 Johnsons Court, Fleet Street & No. 37 Maiden Lane, [1776].
[And:] WEBBER (John), BARTOLOZZI (F.) The Death of Captain Cook. Here with good margins, measuring 480 by 610mm. Some spotting and toning. London, Published as the Act Directs, 1. Jany., 1784.
[Plus:] WEBBER (John). [Plates to Cook's Third Voyage.]
Folding general map, one other folding chart, and 61 plates. Occasional spotting to margins, heavier and more widespread spotting to chart, many tissue-guards adhering at points to verso of facing plate. London, 1784.
An excellent example of the kind of volume put together by a late eighteenth-century collector of both taste and means. In handsome red half-morocco, it collects two of the great rarities from Cook's voyages.
First we have the true first edition of John Webber's own selection of engravings from Cook's third voyage. They were engraved by Webber himself and produced in very limited numbers and the set is complete with all sixteen images. The images includes scenes in New Zealand, Macao, Krakatoa, Kamchatka, Tahiti, Moorea, and Pulo Condore (Vietnam). None of these were included in the official account and so make an important addition to the visual record.
And secondly, a very good copy of the separately issued colour mezzotint of The Poa by Robert Laurie.
Webber (1751-1793) was born in London though was raised by an aunt in Bern, Switzerland where he also received his education. He was an apprentice to the topographical artist Johann Ludwig Aberli (1723-1786) and then continued his education at the Académie Royal in Paris and the Royal Academy back in London. The naturalist Daniel Solander was impressed by his work and recommended him to the Admiralty.
He was subsequently appointed to James Cook's third voyage with the instructions that he should "make Drawings and Paintings of such places in the Countries you may touch at in the course of the said Voyage as may be proper to give a more perfect Idea thereof than can be formed by written descriptions only." Cook recognised the value in the relationship between artist and author, as he "clearly had it in mind on this voyage to publish his own account on his return and it is also clear that he regarded Webber as his visual collaborator in that undertaking from the beginning" (Joppien & Smith). Furthermore, "Webber is both in his own nature and under Cook's guidance more factual, less fanciful and imaginative than Hodges, indulging little in the very free studies and colouristic experiments that frequently graced the work of Hodges. In consequence his total oeuvre became a much greater achievement in visual documentation" (ibid).
ODNB provides a neat digest of Webber's work and its publication history. "His fame largely rests on his fine topographical and ethnographic work from the voyage, planned with Cook and with publication in view. Guided by the surgeon, William Anderson, he also drew natural history subjects (as did William Ellis, surgeon's mate and the other active draughtsman). He returned in October 1780, after Cook's and Anderson's deaths, with over 200 drawings and some twenty portraits in oils, showed a large selection to George III, and was reappointed by the Admiralty at £250 a year to redraw and direct the engraving of sixty-one plates, plus unsigned coastal views, in the official account. It appeared in June 1784 as A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean … (3 vols, ed. J. Douglas). Webber also painted other views for the Admiralty, his last payment being in July 1785. He also published two sets of voyage prints; four aquatints made by Marie Catherina Prestel (1787–88: one repeating his own etching of 1786), and sixteen soft-ground etchings by himself (1788–92) of which more were probably intended. The latter were pioneering, both in the medium used and as an artist's rather than publisher's selection. Reissued in aquatint from about 1808 as Views in the South Seas, they continued to sell into the 1820s."
Webber produced these prints not long before his death. Given that they were published over four years, and that no title-page, or cover, was ever issued for them, complete sets are exceedingly rare.
He was the first artist to produce prints from his own drawings and can be regarded in the same class as the Daniells, who were also involved in every stage of the process: they "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).
The views are as follows:
1. The Narta, or Sledge for Burdens in Kamtchatka; 2. A Sailing Canoe of Otahaite; 3. View in Queen Charlottes Sound, New Zealand; 4. Waheiadooa, Chief of Oheitepeha, lying in State; 5. A View in Oheitepeha Bay, in the Island of Otaheite; 6. Boats of the Friendly Islands; 7. View of the Harbour of Taloo, in the Island of Eimeo; 8. A Toopapaoo of a Chief, with a Priest making his offering to the Morai, in Huoheine; 9. The Resolution beating through the Ice, with the Discovery in the most eminent danger in the distance; 10. Balagans or Summer Habitations, with the method of Drying Fish at St Peter & St Paul, Kamtschatka; 11. A View in the Island of Pulo Condore; 12. A View in the Island of Cracatoa; 13. View in Macao; 14. View in Macao, including the Residence of Camoens; 15. The Plantain Tree, in the Island of Cracatoa; 16. The Fan Palm, in the Island of Cracatoa.
These are preceded by the rare and beautiful mezzotint The Poa, printed after Robert Laurie's (1755?-1836) image. Laurie was apprenticed initially to Robert Sayer in Fleet Street from 1770 and 1777. During those years, and previous to this image, he won awards from the Societ of Arts in 1700, 1775, and 1776.
The Poa, better-known as the tui, is depicted here on a branch poised with a mosquito not far from its beak. It was drawn from a specimen brought back on Cook's second voyage, which included time in New Zealand. This image also featured in Peter Brown's Illustrations of Zoology (1776) and the London printer, J. Sharpe, published another issue in 1786 - with a plate size of only 245 by 230mm.
This separately published example is a significant rarity and is the earliest English print in oil colour: Laurie wanted to capitalise on the excitement surrounding Cook's voyages to demonstrate his new process called "Coloured MezzoTinto." In a letter to the Society of Arts, he explained that "after etching or engraving the outline on a copper plate, the plate was warmed and the appropriate oil colours applied on camel-hair stump brushes. The plate was afterwards wiped with a coarse gauze cloth, then with the hand, as in common practice, and again warmed before being passed through the press" (ODNB). They were duly impressed and awarded him 30 guineas.
The volume is further augmented by Webber's separately issued The Death of Captain Cook and the atlas of Cook's third voyage making for a satisfying and desirable record of not just Cook's voyages, and third voyage in particular, but the kinds of advances in printmaking that they inspired.
The Glasgow Philosophical Society was founded in 1802. Their library was dispersed in 1968, partly through Sotheby's and also to Edinburgh bookseller, James Thin Ltd. This volume was likely purchzsed from Thin around this time.
Not in Maggs catalogue 491 Australia and Oceania, 1927; Beddie 1871; cf. Abbey Travel 595 & Beddie 1869-70 & 1872; Tooley 501; Gerstle & Milner, eds., Recovering the Orient: Artists, Scholars Appropriations (London, 1998), pp. 118-19; Joppien R., & Smith, B., The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages, Vol. 3 text (Yale, 1988), p.2.
