Artist: John Keyse Sherwin (1751-1790) after William Hodges (1744-1797)
Title: The Landing at Erramanga one of the New Hebrides
Date: 1777
School: British, XVIIIth-century
Medium: engraving and etching
Dimensions: 280 x 500mm (plate), 287 x 502mm (sheet)
Watermark: none
Inscriptions/marks: in the plate lower left border <Painted by W Hodges>; in the plate lower centre border <the Landing at ERRAMANGA one of the NEW HEBRIDES./Published Feby 1st 1777. WmStrahan, New Street, Shoe Lane, & Thos Cadell, in the Strand, London.>>; in the plate lower right border <Engraved by J.K. Sherwin./No LXII>>; in the plate lower centre border between the title and publisher detail six back slash strokes with two full stops after, the meaning of which is unknown but possibly an indication of the number of impressions printed to date (see image below).
Condition: good condition on laid paper with two folds, centrefold reinforced with a strip of paper.
Description: engraving by Sherwin after a painting by William Hodges on loan to the National Maritime Museum from the Ministry of Defence. Cook visited Eromanga, now part of Vanuatu, in August 1774. Engraved illustration to James Cook, A Voyage towards the South Pole and Round the World, performed by His Majesty’s Ships the RESOLUTION and ADVENTURE, in the years 1772, 1773, 1774 and 1775, 2 vols., London, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1777, II, plate LXII, fp. 46.
Reference: Rüdiger Joppien and Bernard Smith, The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages, Volume Two, The Voyage of the Resolution & Adventure 1772-1775, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1985, 2.128.
Provenance: Smith’s Bookshop, Christchurch
