Cook Portrait Cleaned

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29130, 16 February 1960, Page 12

Cook Portrait Cleaned

[From the London Correspondent of “The Press’’]

LONDON, February 5. The portrait of Captain Cook by John Webber, R.A., which was on loan in New Zealand last year and has been bought by the New Zealand Government will have an entirely fresh appearance when it is shipped back to the Dominion soon. The picture has been cleaned under the supervision of the National Portrait Gallery. Nearly two centuries of dirt was removed and the bright colours beneath have come up in excellent order. “It turned out to be a better picture than we expected,” said the director of the gallery, Mr C. K. Adams, today. The canvas measures 53in by 38in. It has not been disclosed where it will hang. The most important collection of Cook relics in New Zealand is in the Dominion Museum. Another oil painting by Webber, “The Death of Captain Cook,” is in the Alexander Turnbull Library. For so distinguished a man, there are remarkably few portraits of Cook. The best known is by the fashionable portrait artist, Nathaniel Dance. It was painted before Cook’s third and last voyage of exploration in 1776 and is now in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. It was apparently on this painting that the features of the statues of Cook by Sir Thomas Brock, R.A. (1847-1922) under the Admiralty Arch, Trafalgar Square, and in Victoria Square, Christchurch, were based. The documents that have accumulated with the Webber portrait show that a photograph of it was used to confirm the details of his stature and uniform. Webber was the official artist with Cook’s last expedition and although he was not a portrait painter it is likely that his version of Cook’s features is more accurate than the refined and dramatic portrait by Dance on which most impressions of Cook's appearance are based. It was painted for Cook’s widow who would hardly have accepted anything less than an authentic memorial of her husband. There are two other portraits by Webber. One is a small head and shoulders, perhaps executed in preparation for the bigger picture. This hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. The other is a full-length portrait hanging in Trinity House, Hull. The Dixson Gallery, Sydney, has a portrait, allegedly by William Hodges. The only other portrait of Cook of which there is any record was painted by Hodges, official artist on Cook’s second

voyage. This is no longer known, but an engraving from it generally confirms the features in Webber’s pictures rather than the regular and handsome face in Dance’s painting. The most striking feature in the Webber face is the severe, downturned mouth, suggestive of Cook’s reputed sternness and self-acknowledged quick temper. ‘‘New Zealand has reason to be grateful to Canon T. Harrison Park of Marton-in-Cleveland, Cook’s birthplace, for agreeing to transfer the ownership of the painting to New Zealand,” said the Acting High Commissioner, Mr G. R. Laking. “The canon has made it plain that only his high regard for New Zealand, for the interest which New Zealand House had shown in the birthplace of Cook, and his hope that his action will encourage the foundation of a national collection of historical portraits induced him to part with the painting.” The picture was kept by members of the Cook family for many years, was sold in Sheffield and bought in the 1860’s by H. W. F. Bolchow, the founder of the Middlesborough steel Industry. It remained in the possession of Yorkshire steel families until it was given to Canon Harrison Park.