A Man of Prince William Sound
Suungaaciq, Alaska; 14(?) May 1778.
Single sheet, mounted (8” x 4.5”, 202mm x 115mm). Graphite, chalk and ink on paper.
Near fine, with a little soiling. Mount marked “46” at lower left and “Natives of” [Prince Williams Sound] at lower right. Presented in a blue morocco clam-shell box.
John Webber (1751–1793) was embedded as the expedition artist with Captain James Cook’s third and final voyage. Cook set out in July of 1776, notionally to return Omai to his home in Ra’iatea in the Society Islands (French Polynesia), but in fact seeking the long-elusive Northwest Passage. Cook was the Admiralty’s great hope, and was given an all-star crew aboard HMS Resolution with Charles Clerke in command of her companion HMS Discovery: William Bligh, George Vancouver, Nathaniel Portlock, William Bayly as astronomer and John Webber and artist.
Cook’s third voyage culminated in his death in 1779 during an attempted capture of the supreme monarch of Hawaii, Kalaniʻōpuʻu. Before that, however, he succeeded in the first mapping of the northwestern coast of America, filling in one of the great remaining cartographic gaps. He sailed north along what is now Canada and Alaska. Just south of Anchorage is the Kenai Peninsula; to the west is Cook Inlet and to the east is Prince William Sound (called “Suungaaciq” in Aluutiq), named for the third son of George III, who would later reign as William IV.
Webber drew the present portrait (Joppien-Smith ad loc.: “a field-sketch”) of a Chugach (traditionally “Pacific Eskimo”) man while in southern Alaska in the summer of 1778. The man sports a moustache and goatee above stubble, a tied cloak and a conical hat with a flat top. An example of a Chugach spruce hat of a similar design is now held by the British Museum (Am,NWC.4); it was presented as part of a large group of material from the voyage by Sir Joseph Banks in 1780.
Between this original sketch and the publication of the voyage in 1784 (as pl. 46; cf. the number at the lower-left of the mount), Webber’s design underwent several revisions. A worked-up portrait with more detail in the garb is now at the Peabody at Harvard (41-72-10/502), and a final version at the Dixson Library at the State Library of New South Wales (SAFE/DL PXX 2/vol. 4, fol. 26). The present item, however, has all the freshness and vigor of a drawing made in the course of exploration — one of the most famed and consequential voyages of all time.
The drawing has a distinguished provenance. Francis Peloubet Farquhar (1887–1974, California historian and explorer) bought the painting from Francis Edwards’s catalogue 551 (1930’s?), no. 7. Farquhar’s library was sold via Hordern House to William Reese (1955–2018), one of the great Americana dealers. Reese’s private collection was sold by Christie’s in May 2022; the present item was lot 289.
Joppien, Rüdiger and Bernard Smith. The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988. Vol. 3 Cat. 3.238 (p. 475).
Item #JLR0404
Price: $185,000