1785 The Body of Thee, Chief of Tahiti, as Preserved After Death
DESCRIPTION
The preserved body of a Tahitian chief beneath a funeral shelter appears in this excerpted plate from the French edition of the official account of Captain Cook's third voyage.
In it, a body lies on a platform beneath an open thatched shelter hung with draped white cloth, framed by palms and broad banana leaves. A man in a wrapped cloth stands at left holding a pouch, and a low fence runs across the foreground. The caption reads "Le corps de Thee, chef de O-Taiti, tel qu'on le conservoit après sa mort," or "The body of Thee, a chief of Tahiti, as it was preserved after his death."
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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