Painting:
Portrait of Captain James Cook RN 1782
by John Webber.
Oil on canvas.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
Purchased by the Commonwealth Government with the generous assistance of Robert Oatley and John Schaeffer 2000

He circumnavigated and mapped New Zealand, surveyed and claimed the east coast of Australia, explored the continent of Antarctica, visited Tahiti and disclosed numerous island groups. As a result of measures he took to raise standards of hygiene and nutrition on board his ships, there was an appreciable improvement in the health of future British seamen. Cook's voyages coincided with the proliferation of new types of publishing enterprise in Britain and Europe throughout the eighteenth century, and his progress and adventures were reported to an avid public almost as they took place.

John Webber RA (c.1752–1793) was the official painter on Cook's third and last voyage of 1776–1780 ... It was Webber’s job to make drawings and paintings of people and objects encountered on the journey; to 'observe the genius, temper, disposition and number of the natives... shewing them every kind of civility and regard.'

Webber's 1782 portrait is one of five known surviving portraits of Cook painted in the eighteenth century, and until it was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, it was the only one outside a major gallery or museum...

This 1782 portrait of Cook was painted from memory. It is likely that Webber, having spent three years with Cook on his troubled final voyage, respected his captain's instinctively humane and disciplined approach to seafaring. So his final portrait eschews the severe representation of the earlier, better known image by Nathaniel Dance, managing to emphasise the subject's willpower, but also to gesture at his leniency and integrity. Quite apart from the eminence of its subject, the painting finely incorporates the characteristic elements of eighteenth century portraiture; sweep, amplitude, and gesture are employed to reflect the sitter's character, vision and determination. The long torso was also something of a convention of portraiture of the time, although Cook was more than 180cm tall. Landscape settings, too, were common in eighteenth century portraits, but the stormy background in the Cook portrait has particular resonance, reminding us that the brave sailor lived and died trying to disclose the potential of the sea and the sky to the wider world.

Extract source: From an account by Sarah Engledow, Historian, National Portrait Gallery Published in Portrait 8, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 2003.