This engraving, after a drawing by William Hodges, is for the official account of Cook's second voyage, 'A Voyage towards the South Pole', published by Strahan and Cadell in 1777 (vol. II, pl. xxxix, f.p. 119). This appears to be a proof before letter, but with lettering very lightly marked in, since the imprint date of 1 February 1777 appears on final versions. For an example, see PAI4010.

Captain James Cook (1728-79) made three separate voyages to the Pacific (first in the 'Endeavour', second with 'Resolution' and 'Adventure', and finally with 'Resolution and 'Discovery'). He did more than any other voyager to explore it and the Southern Ocean, not only encountering Pacific cultures for the first time but also assembling the first large-scale collections of Pacific objectsbrought back to Europe. He was killed on Hawaii in 1779. Hodges (1744-97) was the draughtsman and painter on Cook's second expedition,1772-75, and was subsequently employed by the Admiralty to work up drawings for engraving and produce finished oil paintings from it.

Cook located New Caledonia in September 1774 and was there in the 'Resolution' between 3 and 13 September. Before he left Hodges completed, as he had at Tana, a portrait of a typical man and a typical woman of the island. They are highly competent works but wholly impersonal. Melanesians, it seems, made no imaginative impression upon him and these images are more in the older tradition of ethnographic topography rather than personal portraiture. As for the portrait of the man, the original red chalk drawing of the woman from which this print was made is in the National Library of Australia in Canberra, though it may be from another now lost taken on the spot. This and the print are reproduced by Joppien and Smith in 'The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages' (vol. II, p. 238 and 239) with those of the man on pp. 237 and 238. The drawing more clearly shows three vertical lines tattooed between the female sitter's lower lip and chin: the visible earlobe is also pierced and elongated. Cook made references to New Caledonian coiffure: 'Some wear it long [i.e. hair] . . . others again and those are not a few, and likewise all the women, wear it crop'd short ...Their houses, or at least most of them, are like Beehives. See drawing N. 53 [now lost].' (See 'Journals' [ed. Beaglehole], II, pp. 539-40). For the print of the man of New Caledonia, see PAI4099.

Mounted in album with PAI2055-PAI2114, PAI2116-PAI2127.; No.57.