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Lot Essay
Hodges paints the bay in the morning, the sun rising in the east over Point Venus and Tahitian canoes immediately below bringing bananas and coconuts frame the scene on the left, and an outrigger and double canoe moored on the right in front of Turtle Rock frame the scene on the right. There is no sign of the visitors: smoke rises on the hillside (as hogs are baked), and, with a few brief strokes, Hodges describes a few more canoes and outriggers, in the middleground and on Point Venus. Tahiti’s verdant and mountainous landscape rises beyond. This was the scene that greeted the Resolution on the morning of their first arrival off Matavai Bay, on 25 August 1773, a ‘picturesque’ scene just as described by the young Forster:
'Towards ten o’clock we had the pleasure to see several canoes coming off from the shore towards us. Their long narrow sails, consisting of several mats sowed together, their streamers of feathers, and the heap of coconuts and bananas on board, had all together a picturesque effect. For a few beads and nails they disposed of their cargoes, and returned on shore to take in another.' (G. Forster, Journal, Wednesday 25 August 1773).
The Resolution anchored inside the reef later that day: '25th About 4 oClock stood into Matavi Bay through the Passage which lies between the Larboard Reef and Dolphin Bank and came to an Anchor in 7 fathoms Water and Moored with the stream anchor.' (Journal of William Wales, 25 August 1773) and the astronomer Wales would set up his observatory and tents on the point the following morning.
Matavai Bay was the most famous anchorage in the South Seas, first visited by Wallis in the Dolphin in 1767, by Bougainville in 1768, and was Cook's favoured Tahitian base on his three voyages, as well as Captain Bligh's famous anchorage from October 1788-April 1789 as HMS Bounty took on its cargo of breadfruit seedlings. When planning his second voyage, Cook had identified Tahiti as a suitable place to overwinter in between his ships’ traverses of the high latitudes of the eastern reaches of the southern ocean, in search of the southern continent. The Resolution and Adventure were duly in the Society Islands in August-September 1773 and April-June 1774 in the ‘tropical sweeps’ that came before and after the second ice-edge cruise. These anchorages at Tahiti and in the surrounding Tahitian islands gave Hodges his first tropical subjects and resulted in a handful of oil sketches painted in the islands, two of which, painted at Cook’s Tahitian anchorages at Vaitepiha and Matavai Bays, would form the basis of his most ambitious pictures of the South Seas, exhibited together at the Royal Academy in 1776.
'Tahitians now played host, for the first time, to a professional European painter. William Hodges's record of the place is remarkable for being both precisely empirical and suffused with sensuality. It is carefully descriptive in some respects – Hodges went to a great deal of trouble to capture the singular expansiveness of Oceanic seas and skies – and romantically imaginative in others.' (N. Thomas, Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook, London, 2003, pp.191-92).
'The tropical character not only of Tahiti but of the Society Islands in general presented Hodges with a set of visual problems quite different from that of Antarctica or New Zealand. … These were the portrayal of the atmosphere, light and colour of the tropics; his approach is wholly that of a painter preoccupied with the visual problems of naturalistic painting. He does not build up details as a natural history draughtsman might, but works from a general effect down to detail; subordinating detail to general effect. His method is demonstrated most clearly in oil sketches he made on location …' (R. Joppien and B. Smith, The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages, II, The Voyage of the Resolution & Adventure 1772-1775, New Haven and London, 1985, p.51). Unrecorded until its appearance at auction in 2000, the present picture is thought to be an oil sketch made on location from which the two larger versions of this subject were worked up for exhibition at the Royal Academy after the voyage: Joppien and Smith, 2.48 (Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art) and 2.49 (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, MoD Art Collection). There is a small panel of the same subject, 2.47 (Private collection, U.K.). The large picture of Matavai Bay at Yale varies in introducing war canoes into the bay, which were much in evidence during Cook’s extended second anchorage at Matavai Bay in April-May 1774. The large variant at Greenwich (‘view in Maitavie Bay’), painted for the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, replaces the war ships with Cook’s ships, the Resolution and Adventure at their anchorage off Point Venus, and so acknowledges the voyage’s patron, the Navy. The composition of the small panel (2.47) is similar to and may be a later copy by Hodges of the present work.
Hodges's working practice on the voyage was discussed by Joppien and Smith in 1988, the lack of drawings suggesting that his oil sketches may have been the 'drawings' mentioned by Cook that the artist had made in the field: 'He was always more confident drawing with a brush, either in water-colour, wash or oil, than in drawing with a pencil. ... We must allow therefore for the possibility that Hodges may have made some of his drawings directly as oil sketches. The viewpoint of several is from the Resolution; and he may have developed the practice of sketching in oil directly through the windows of the Resolution, which provided views not only aft but also to some extent to port and starboard. ... ' (R. Joppien and B. Smith, Ibid., p.51). Bonehill discussed the present picture and its likelihood of being a voyage work in 2005, only its size and softer tonality distinguishing it in his opinion from the other oil sketches thought to have been painted on the voyage: 'It is painted on thickly woven canvas similar to undisputed voyage paintings but differs from those works in certain technical aspects. While it has the immediacy of the undoubted voyage paintings, the tonal contrasts are less sharp and the palette more monochromatic. ... The limited colour range here might be ascribed to difficulties with mixing the pigments or to the artist's 'want of proper colours'. Either suggestion implies, however, that this is a painting from the voyage itself.' (G. Quilley and J. Bonehill, Ibid., p.91).
This highly composed canvas, with its foreground coulisses, its more mixed colours, and its size, markedly larger than the Polynesian canvases that are taken on the spot, all suggest to us that this may be a picture Hodges has worked up later, possibly in the great cabin on the Resolution, rather than in front of the subject. Unlike their brief six days at Tautira, when Hodges spent much of the time sketching in the Tautira valley and brushed the sparkling smaller canvas of the valley at speed in unmixed colours (lot 10), they were at anchor at Matavai Bay for a week in August 1773, and returned for over three weeks the following year, from 22 April to 14 May 1774, giving the artist greater opportunity to work up a more composed picture.
When offered at Christie's in 1859 (see provenance) the present picture was described as 'a companion' to the previous lot in the sale, 'Hodges. 51 View of Fayal, in the Azores.' - this latter a now lost picture from the Resolution's five-day stay at the Bay of Fayal in July 1775.
'Towards ten o’clock we had the pleasure to see several canoes coming off from the shore towards us. Their long narrow sails, consisting of several mats sowed together, their streamers of feathers, and the heap of coconuts and bananas on board, had all together a picturesque effect. For a few beads and nails they disposed of their cargoes, and returned on shore to take in another.' (G. Forster, Journal, Wednesday 25 August 1773).
The Resolution anchored inside the reef later that day: '25th About 4 oClock stood into Matavi Bay through the Passage which lies between the Larboard Reef and Dolphin Bank and came to an Anchor in 7 fathoms Water and Moored with the stream anchor.' (Journal of William Wales, 25 August 1773) and the astronomer Wales would set up his observatory and tents on the point the following morning.
Matavai Bay was the most famous anchorage in the South Seas, first visited by Wallis in the Dolphin in 1767, by Bougainville in 1768, and was Cook's favoured Tahitian base on his three voyages, as well as Captain Bligh's famous anchorage from October 1788-April 1789 as HMS Bounty took on its cargo of breadfruit seedlings. When planning his second voyage, Cook had identified Tahiti as a suitable place to overwinter in between his ships’ traverses of the high latitudes of the eastern reaches of the southern ocean, in search of the southern continent. The Resolution and Adventure were duly in the Society Islands in August-September 1773 and April-June 1774 in the ‘tropical sweeps’ that came before and after the second ice-edge cruise. These anchorages at Tahiti and in the surrounding Tahitian islands gave Hodges his first tropical subjects and resulted in a handful of oil sketches painted in the islands, two of which, painted at Cook’s Tahitian anchorages at Vaitepiha and Matavai Bays, would form the basis of his most ambitious pictures of the South Seas, exhibited together at the Royal Academy in 1776.
'Tahitians now played host, for the first time, to a professional European painter. William Hodges's record of the place is remarkable for being both precisely empirical and suffused with sensuality. It is carefully descriptive in some respects – Hodges went to a great deal of trouble to capture the singular expansiveness of Oceanic seas and skies – and romantically imaginative in others.' (N. Thomas, Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook, London, 2003, pp.191-92).
'The tropical character not only of Tahiti but of the Society Islands in general presented Hodges with a set of visual problems quite different from that of Antarctica or New Zealand. … These were the portrayal of the atmosphere, light and colour of the tropics; his approach is wholly that of a painter preoccupied with the visual problems of naturalistic painting. He does not build up details as a natural history draughtsman might, but works from a general effect down to detail; subordinating detail to general effect. His method is demonstrated most clearly in oil sketches he made on location …' (R. Joppien and B. Smith, The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages, II, The Voyage of the Resolution & Adventure 1772-1775, New Haven and London, 1985, p.51). Unrecorded until its appearance at auction in 2000, the present picture is thought to be an oil sketch made on location from which the two larger versions of this subject were worked up for exhibition at the Royal Academy after the voyage: Joppien and Smith, 2.48 (Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art) and 2.49 (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, MoD Art Collection). There is a small panel of the same subject, 2.47 (Private collection, U.K.). The large picture of Matavai Bay at Yale varies in introducing war canoes into the bay, which were much in evidence during Cook’s extended second anchorage at Matavai Bay in April-May 1774. The large variant at Greenwich (‘view in Maitavie Bay’), painted for the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, replaces the war ships with Cook’s ships, the Resolution and Adventure at their anchorage off Point Venus, and so acknowledges the voyage’s patron, the Navy. The composition of the small panel (2.47) is similar to and may be a later copy by Hodges of the present work.
Hodges's working practice on the voyage was discussed by Joppien and Smith in 1988, the lack of drawings suggesting that his oil sketches may have been the 'drawings' mentioned by Cook that the artist had made in the field: 'He was always more confident drawing with a brush, either in water-colour, wash or oil, than in drawing with a pencil. ... We must allow therefore for the possibility that Hodges may have made some of his drawings directly as oil sketches. The viewpoint of several is from the Resolution; and he may have developed the practice of sketching in oil directly through the windows of the Resolution, which provided views not only aft but also to some extent to port and starboard. ... ' (R. Joppien and B. Smith, Ibid., p.51). Bonehill discussed the present picture and its likelihood of being a voyage work in 2005, only its size and softer tonality distinguishing it in his opinion from the other oil sketches thought to have been painted on the voyage: 'It is painted on thickly woven canvas similar to undisputed voyage paintings but differs from those works in certain technical aspects. While it has the immediacy of the undoubted voyage paintings, the tonal contrasts are less sharp and the palette more monochromatic. ... The limited colour range here might be ascribed to difficulties with mixing the pigments or to the artist's 'want of proper colours'. Either suggestion implies, however, that this is a painting from the voyage itself.' (G. Quilley and J. Bonehill, Ibid., p.91).
This highly composed canvas, with its foreground coulisses, its more mixed colours, and its size, markedly larger than the Polynesian canvases that are taken on the spot, all suggest to us that this may be a picture Hodges has worked up later, possibly in the great cabin on the Resolution, rather than in front of the subject. Unlike their brief six days at Tautira, when Hodges spent much of the time sketching in the Tautira valley and brushed the sparkling smaller canvas of the valley at speed in unmixed colours (lot 10), they were at anchor at Matavai Bay for a week in August 1773, and returned for over three weeks the following year, from 22 April to 14 May 1774, giving the artist greater opportunity to work up a more composed picture.
When offered at Christie's in 1859 (see provenance) the present picture was described as 'a companion' to the previous lot in the sale, 'Hodges. 51 View of Fayal, in the Azores.' - this latter a now lost picture from the Resolution's five-day stay at the Bay of Fayal in July 1775.