EDITORIAL
This issue is devoted to early New Zealand. Over the past few years this part of the collection has been augmented quite considerably; and most recently by Hodges' Dusky Bay. If the main emphasis may lie in the historical importance of these works, many are by artists who approached their task of documentation with sensitivity and a sympathetic eye, giving us today paintings or drawings which are still valid for their perceptive images of this country and its people.
GEORGE COOKE (1781-1834) British
PERFORATED ROCK WITH A PA, TOLAGA, NEW
ZEALAND (COVER)
Line Engraving (coloured) 136 x 200mm
This print by George Cooke, who was a well known reproductive engraver, is taken from another engraving which appeared in Hawkes-worth's Voyages, 1773. Both are derived from a pencil drawing (B.M. Add. M.S. 23920.46) by H. D. Sporing, assistant naturalist on Cook's first voyage to the Pacific. The drawing and earlier print arc reproduced, Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, Nos. 15, 12. Our print, published 1812, probably was made for Pinkerton's Collection of Voyages and Travels (17 Vols., 1808-14). However, the curious error has occurred (not mentioned by Dr Smith) that Sporing's drawing is of a similar rock with a fortified pa in Mercury Bay (ibid: p.18). Thus Hawkesworth's engraver made the initial error of confusing the two rocks — to be followed, no doubt, by many others. One may assume that the drawing by |
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Parkinson (botanical artist, First Voyage) from the landward side of the Tolaga rock (Smith No. 14) has been confused with the reverse of the Mercury Bay one. This topographical error, however, does not diminish Dr Smith's interesting observation that these two natural grottoes had some influence on the formation of English Romantic taste in nature.
WILLIAM HODGES RA (1744-1797) British
A VIEW IN DUSKY BAY, NEW ZEALAND
Oil on panel 647mm diameter
Purchased with the aid of the National Art Collections Fund, 1961. This attractive painting is probably one of the repetitions by Hodges from those of his paintings of the South Seas painted for the Admiralty. This is the only roundel by Hodges known to us, and the fact that it is on a half inch thick mahogany panel might indicate that it was adapted from some shipboard use. However, the highly finished painting would argue against the conjecture that it might have been done on the spot. Hodges was draughtsman to Cook's second voyage (1772-1775), visiting New Zealand in 1773, while the figure of the Maori is taken from his Waterfall in Dusky Bay (53 x 75 1/4 — Admiralty). The landscape background docs not appear in any of the other Dusky Bay scenes which he painted.
Cook describes in his journal (12 April 1773) the occasion of meeting the Maori family of whom Hodges made numerous drawings — and by whom he was given the name of Taitoe.
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