1785 Dance in Tahiti
DESCRIPTION
A dance performance in Tahiti appears in this excerpted plate from the French edition of the official account of Captain Cook's third voyage.
In it, two women in long skirts and towering fan-shaped headdresses dance on a mat before a large thatched house, each flanked by a man crouched low. Drummers sit in the shade of the house behind them, and crowds of onlookers press in at either side beneath palms and dense trees. The caption reads "Danse d'O-Taiti," or "Dance in Tahiti."
Cook's Third Voyage
Captain James Cook's third and final voyage, aboard the Resolution and Discovery from 1776 to 1780, crossed the Pacific by way of Tonga and Tahiti before sailing north to the coast of northwest America, Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands. Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779, and his ships returned home under other commanders. The expedition's artist, John Webber, recorded the people, places, and objects they encountered, and his drawings were engraved for the official account published in London in 1784. A French translation followed in Paris in 1785, with its plates re-engraved under the direction of Robert Bénard.
CONDITION
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