• Title
  [Ships Discovery and Resolution at the harbour of St Peter and St Paul, Kamchatka], ca 1779 / artist unknown
• Call number
  V/300
  
• Level of description
  fonds
• Date
  
  ca 1779
• Type of material
  Graphic Materials, Drawings
• Reference code
  1353519
• Physical Description
  1 drawing - 29.0 x 45.5 cm - watercolour
  
• ADMINISTRATIVE/ BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
  
  At the time of the setting of this drawing the two British ships Resolution and Discovery were on their second visit to Avacha Bay, Kamchatka in August 1779, after unsucessfully seeking an ice free north-west passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The returned ships stayed at Kamchatka for two months.
  
  References:
  Captain James Cook's voyages of discovery. http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/ (accessed 20 November 2015); library correspondence file; and vendor.
• Scope and Content
  This watercolour depicts two ships from Cook's third voyage, the Discovery and the Resolution, at anchor in the harbour of St Peter and St Paul, Kamchatka in the latter part of 1779. On the left is another ship, possibly the Russian Galliot or flat-bottomed ketch from Okhotsk which the English crew noted as arriving in the bay on 10 September. In the foreground are a group of Kamchatkans with their pet dog.
• Copying Conditions
  Out of copyright: Creator died before 1955
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• Signatures / Inscriptions
  
  Incribed on verso in pencil 'Canada. No. IJ 2026/2120'
• Attributions / conjectures
  
  Unsigned, artist unknown. Appears to have been done 'on the spot' as it varies in several ways from other images painted by three men on the voyage: the offical artist John Webber, surgeon William Ellis, and midshipman Edward Riou. This drawing is closest in style to the single image attributed to Riou, who seems to have been responsible for the landscape added to a chart that he made of the bay (now in the Hydrographic Office, England. See: The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages / Joppien & Smith, 3.356).
• Name
  Discovery (Ship)
  Resolution (Ship)
  
• Subject
  Cook, James, 1728-1779.
  Pacific Ocean--Discovery and exploration--British.
  Pacific Area--Discovery and exploration.
  Voyages and travels in art
  Voyages of exploration.
  
• Place
  Kamchatka Peninsula (Russia)
  
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE8859780

View Media Files

1.

2.

Show more