print
- Museum number
- 1870,0514.476
- Title
- Object: A View in the Island of Cracatoa
- Description
-
Landscape with a thatched building with a covered terrace, surrounded by palms and other treees with a wooded slope in the background to left and two figures in front of the house in the foreground to left, one leaning over a work-bench, with food-stuffs on a low table next to a thatched hut on stilts in the extreme left. 1789
Hand-coloured soft-ground etching
- Production date
- 1789
- Dimensions
-
Height: 331 millimetres
-
Width: 454 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- There is another version of this subject, with slight alterations in the figures, of which there is an impression in BM P&D, a trimmed proof with sketches on the verso (Joppein & Smith 3.410A.a; 1872,0713.554).
John Webber was the official artist on Cook's final voyage through the Pacific; his drawings formed the basis for printed illustrations to the account of the voyage 'A Voyage to the Pacific', published in 1784, engraved by various artists. He also published his own prints of drawings he made on the voyages himself between 1788 and 1792, as outline etchings hand-coloured by himself (in the manner he had learned from Aberli). Several of the plates were re-published after his death by J Boydell in 1808; these have aquatint added. For more information, including details on the publication of Cook's Voyages, see: Rüdiger Joppien and Bernard Smith, 'The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages', vol.III pp.192-6 (Yale UP 1988). For information on the set republished by Boydell, see also Abbey 595.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1870
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1870,0514.476
