Death of Captain James Cook
Oil on canvas
by George Carter (1737-1794)
ca. 1783
Prominent English history, genre, and landscape painter George Carter was born in Colchester and went to London at an early age. He exhibited his works at the Society of Art and at the Royal Academy. Carter is best known for painting The Battle between the English Battleship Quebec and the French ship La Surveillante and Death of Captain James Cook, both of which were reproduced as engravings and sold to the public.
Carter created the Death of Captain James Cook based on the work of John Webber, the official draftsman for Captain Cook's third voyage around the Pacific. Cook, a British explorer and captain of the first Western vessels to visit Hawai'i's shores, was killed in a skirmish resulting from cultural misunderstandings. As it is unlikely that Webber was on shore at Kaÿawaloa to witness the Cook's death on February 14, 1779, Webber's rendering of the subject was probably taken from often inconsistent eye-witness accounts. Webber took further liberties by repositioning the scene to include the cliffs at Kealakekua, creating a far more dramatic backdrop than the flat plain of Ka'awaloa.
The image itself was modeled after Benjamin West's The Death of General Wolfe (1770), a piece that marked an important shift in history paintings by depicting people in historically accurate clothing styles and not in classical garments.
Engravings based on Webber's creation were circulated in 1782, two years prior to the publication of the official voyage narrative. Webber did successfully recreate a scene in which Cook is lauded as a fallen hero. His "heroic" demise became a popular subject for additional prints, ceramics, and paintings, like that of Carter's Death of Captain James Cook. Carter himself focused on this subject at least three other times, resulting in similar paintings of Captain Cook's death.