WILLIAM HODGES and painting of RESOLUTION

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aukepalmhof
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WILLIAM HODGES and painting of RESOLUTION

Post by aukepalmhof » Wed Oct 19, 2016 8:09 pm

A new set of stamps has been released on the subject of William Hodges, the artist who accompanied Captain Cook when he was first to land on the Island in 1775.
Entitled 'William Hodges: The Art of Discovery', the set of four stamps and a First Day Cover were released on September 30th.
William Hodges was born in London. In 1772 he was appointed draughtsman on Captain James Cook's second voyage and he is best known for the paintings and sketches of the places he visited during that journey, including Antarctica and Easter Island. The apparent purpose of the second voyage was to search for evidence of a mythical, but much speculated upon, southern continent.
The Admiralty brief to Hodges was “to make drawings and paintings of such places as they may touch at worth notice, in their intended voyage” and to “give a more perfect idea thereof that can be formed from written descriptions only”. While Hodges drew coastal views for navigation purposes, his main work was to gather material for landscape paintings. During the course of their three-year journey, the crews of Cook's RESOLUTION and its sister? ship ADVENTURE, were exposed to extreme weather conditions, environments and peoples. These ranged from the icy wastes of Antarctic waters to the first Pacific landfall in the dense rain forest of New Zealand's Dusky Sound, from the complex, hierarchical cultures of the cluster of Society Islands to the most geographically remote of all Polynesian societies, Easter Island.
Cook's expedition circumnavigated the globe at very high southern latitude, and on January 17th 1773 became the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. Cook discovered the South Sandwich Islands and was first to land on South Georgia. He mapped the islands and took possession of South Georgia for Britain.
The voyage required Hodges to respond to a staggering range of subjects, from the fantastical shapes of sea-worn ice to panoramic renderings of island cliffs and shores. He was asked to produce not only studies of the landscape, but portraits and botanical drawings. The artist proved remarkably flexible. Faced with exotic and unfamiliar landscapes, he was able to modify his conventional ways of working. These paintings were some of the first landscapes to use light and shadow for dramatic purposes. Hodges' use of light as a compositional element in its own right was a marked departure from the classical landscape tradition and contemporary art critics complained that his use of light and colour contrasts gave his paintings a rough and unfinished appearance.
On his return to London, Hodges was employed to supervise the production of engravings to illustrate the official account of the voyage. He also produced a series of epic paintings to commemorate the voyage.
The sketch of Cook's ship RESOLUTION in a stream of pack-ice that features on one of the 70p stamps is owned by 'The Captain Cook Memorial Museum'. The other 70p stamp features one of Hodges' epic paintings from the voyage, 'A View of the Monuments of Easter Island'. http://www.shipstamps.co.uk/forum/viewt ... 098#p11098
The 95p stamp features Hodges' portrait of Captain Cook.
The etching on the £1.15 stamp is taken from an original print entitled “Possession Bay in the Island of South Georgia. Drawn from nature by W. Hodges. Engrav'd by S. Smith”, this engraving was included in the book “A voyage towards the South Pole, and round the World”, by James Cook.

Source: South Georgia Post.
South Georgia 2010 70/1.15 sg?, scott?
Attachments
RESOLUTION cook ship.jpg
2010 william hodges 1.jpg
2010 william hodges 3.jpg
2010 william hodges 4.jpg
2010 william hodges 2.jpg

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