Artist: James Record (fl. 1768-1792) engraver, after a drawing by John James Barralet (1747-1815) based on a drawing by Sydney Parkinson (1745-1771)
Title: Portrait of Otegoowgoow, son of a chief of the Bay of Islands in New Zealand
Date: 1773
School: British XVIIIth-century
Medium: engraving and etching
Dimensions: 225 x 183mm (plate), 263 x 220mm (support)
Watermark: partial Strasbourg Bend (see image below)
Inscriptions/marks: numbered in the plate lower right <<N0 13>>
Condition: crisp and clear impression printed on laid paper with partial Strasbourg Bend watermark
Description: Bust portrait of a tattooed Maori man in profile to the right, a heru or comb in his top knot, pounamu or greenstone kuru or ear ornament and a carved rei niho paraoa or whale-tooth neck pendant. Around his shoulders is a kaitaka, a finely woven cloak of flax. A very similar rei niho paraoa that was acquired on one of Cook’s Pacific voyages is in the British Museum, Oc,NZ.159 (see image below). Otegoowgoow or Otegoongoon has been identified by Anne Salmond as possibly Te Kuukuu, a Ngaapuhi (?) chief’s son who was shot in the thigh during a skirmish on the island of Motuarohia in the Bay of Islands on 29 November 1769. See Anne Salmond, Two Worlds. First Meetings Between Maori and Europeans 1642-1772, Auckland, Viking, 1991, p 224.
This engraving illustrated John Hawkesorth’s account of the voyage, An Account of the Voyages undertaken by order of His Present Majesty for making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere…. 3 vols., London: W. Strahan & T. Cadell, 1773, III, pl. 13 fp. 453
Reference: Rüdiger Joppien and Bernard Smith, The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages, Volume I: The Voyage of the Endeavour 1768-1771, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985, cat. 1.126-1.127A, pp. 184-185. For the attribution to James Record as engraver, see British Museum Collection database, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1977-U-704
Provenance: Art + Object, Auckland, Rare Books, Militaria, Maps, Historical Art, 4 July 2023, lot. 389
