[COOK; TAHITI] Photograph of an eighteenth-century engraving, “Sacrifice humain qui eut lieu dans un des morais de O-Taiti”

Papeete, Tahiti : Mrs. Sophia Hoare, [between 1880 and 1889]. Albumen print photograph of a copperplate engraving, 110 x 207 mm; unmounted; verso with the wet stamp of ‘Mrs. S. Hoare, Photographer, Papeete, Tahiti’; in good condition with an expected amount of very light creasing.

Sacrifice humain qui eut lieu dans un des marais de O-Taiti, after a drawing by John Webber, was engraved by Robert Bernard and first published in the 1778 French edition of the official account of Cook’s second voyage. The original drawing was made by Webber in 1773 during Cook’s second voyage. The photograph of Bernard’s 1778 engraving was taken by Papeete photographer Mrs. Sophia Hoare, who sold examples of such images in loose albumen print format as souvenirs to European tourists throughout the 1880s.

Provenance: James Lyle Young (1849-1929), Papeete merchant and Pacific Islands trader; by descent (Melbourne, Australia).