HISTORIC OIL PAINTING

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1931, Page 7

HISTORIC OIL PAINTING

PRESENTED TO NELSON GALLERY AN ARTIST ON COOK’S VOYAGE. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Nelson, Last Night. Sir Francis Bell has presented a valuable and historic oil painting by James Webber, R.A., to 'the Suter Art Gallery. Webber was an artist on Captain Cook’s third voyage and the picture shows Ship ; Cove, Queen Charlotte b Sound, with Cook’s survey party’s tent and a number of Maoris and canoes. In a letter to Mr. C- R. Fell? one of the trustees of the gallery, Sir Francis says: “Your letter recalls that I was born at Nelson ten years after its foundation bv the New Zealand Company under the leadership of my distant cousin, Captain Arthur Wakefield, my father being then (1851) the resident agent at Nelson of the company. It is probable some of the old Natives who met Arthur Wakefield in 1841 had in their childhood seen Captain Cook, and it seems this painting by the artist of Cook’s expedition could not find a more appropriate resting place than the city nearest ,'to Queen Charlotte’s Sound of the Dominion which really owes its union with Great Britain to Captain Cook.”