A Toupapow with a Corpse on it Attended by the Chief Mourner in his Habit of Ceremony.

Title

A Toupapow with a Corpse on it Attended by the Chief Mourner in his Habit of Ceremony.

Description

View shows a body laid out in Tahiti, accompanied by the mourning head in his ceremonial robe. Edited by W. Strahan, engraved by W. Woollett, drawn after Hodges.

c. 1777

Artist

Hodges (1744-1797)

William Hodges (1744- 1797 ) was an English painter. Hodges accompanied Captain James Cook aboard the Resolution on his second voyage to the South Seas, including Tahiti, the Tonga Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island and Antarctica. During his stay on board Hodges mainly made landscape sketches, but also some portraits of expedition members as well as special personalities of the visited islands. His landscape paintings usually also include elements showing the way of life of the people visited. His sketches were further worked on after his return to London, Hodges obtained employment for some time with the Admiralty, which allowed him to produce oil paintings from the sketches and to supervise the production of engravings of the same. Hodges' pictures illustrate as engravings in large quantity the later published travel descriptions of James Cook.

Historical Description

Tahiti was settled - like the other Society Islands - around 200 BC from Tonga and Samoa. It is not conclusively clear which European can be considered the "discoverer" of Tahiti. The Portuguese Pedro Fernández de Quirós sighted an inhabited island in 1606, which he called Sagittaria and which, according to some chroniclers, could have been Tahiti. However, there is no confirmation of this. Today, the Englishman Samuel Wallis is considered the first European to set foot on Tahiti in 1767. The visits of James Cook have remained in the consciousness of Europeans. In April 1769 he anchored with his ship Endeavour in Matavai Bay, about 10 km north of today's Papeete. Traveling with Cook was botanist Joseph Banks, who conducted extensive botanical studies during his three-month stay. His findings led to the fateful 1787 voyage of the Bounty to Tahiti, which was commissioned by the British Admiralty to William Bligh.