Offering Before Captain Cook, Hawaii, after Webber, Engraving, circa 1790

An original line engraving of a ceremony in honor of Captain James Cook in the Hawaiian Islands, lettered "An Offering before Captain Cook in the Sandwich Islands." in decorative capitals with a flourish beneath the image. It is signed "Walker sculp." at lower right, and a faint artist's credit at lower left has worn too weak to read.

Cook and three of his officers, in coats and powdered hair, stand at the center before a palisade and a high thatched house, while a priest in a draped cloth presents an offering, flanked by two tall carved and feathered standards. Rows of islanders sit on the ground before them, a man kneels at left beside a smoking fire, and baskets of food lie in the foreground. Palms, banana plants and broad leaved taro frame the scene on both sides.

The composition is a reduced copy of the drawing by John Webber, the official artist of Cook's third voyage, which records a ceremony held for Cook at Kealakekua Bay on the island of Hawaii in January 1779, shortly before his death there. Webber's image was first engraved for the official account of the voyage published in London in 1784, and it was copied many times for the popular collections of voyages that followed, which brought the Pacific to a wide reading public.

The print is uncolored, with crisp line work in the thatch, the palm fronds and the seated figures. As a record of the first sustained contact between Hawaiians and Europeans, it appeals to collectors of Pacific exploration, Hawaiian history and Captain Cook, and it would sit well in a study or library beside maps of the Pacific, framed simply with a wide cream mat.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.