A Man of Prince William Sound - photo 1

A Man of Prince William Sound

Lot 289
26.05.2022 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Sold
$ 75 600
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 752918
Lot 289 | A Man of Prince William Sound
Estimate value
$ 70 000 – 100 000
A Man of Prince William SoundJohn Webber, 1778WEBBER, John (1751-1793)[A Man of Prince William Sound] Suungaaciq, Alaska, 1778 202 x 155mm, drawing in pencil, chalk, and sepia and pink wash on paper. Mounted to larger piece of paper with watercolor border and matted, in custom morocco box with chemise. Provenance: Francis Edwards catalogue 551, no. 7 (sold to:) – Francis P. Farquhar (1887-1974, California mountaineer and conservationist; sold via Hordern House c.2000, Taken from the Life, no. 6. Original drawing by expedition artist John Webber for the publication of Cook's Third Voyage. This fine portrait of a Chugach man well represents Webber's straightforward style, and is particularly interesting for the ability to track the development of its imagery from manuscript to print. A revised pen-and-wash version held by Harvard's Peabody Museum documents substantial changes to the depiction of the subject's tunic, hat, and facial ornaments. A third version of the drawing, prepared for the engraver and now held by the Dixson Library, reveals further updates: exaggeration of the hair and facial ornaments, further elaboration of the hat, and the growth of the subject's beard. The resulting engraving is plate 46 in the 1784 official publication of the voyage. The sitter may be a man who came aboard the Resolution briefly on 14 May of 1778, described in Cook's diary entry for that day. A hat very similar to the one depicted here was taken by the Cook expedition and was presented to the British Museum, where it remains today. This drawing was exhibited as part of the Anchorage Museum's show "Arctic Ambitions: Captain Cook and the Northwest Passage in 2015, and is illustrated in their catalogue of the same name. See also Hordern House, Taken from the Life… The Farquhar Collection of North Pacific Drawings by John Webber (2000), no. 6 (this item); and Rüdiger Joppien and Bernard Smith, The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages, vol. 3 (1988), no. 3.237A.
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