Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
John Webber
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1751 - 1793
History
John Webber was an English artist most famous for the drawings he created while accompanying the explorer Captain James Cook on his third and final voyage. Webber studied fine arts in Switzerland and Paris. Returning to England in 1775, he came to the attention of the English naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, who appears to have introduced him to Captain James Cook. Cook subsequently hired Webber to accompany him aboard the HMS Resolution as a topographical artist, supplying drawings to supplement the official written account of the journey.
In July 1776, the expedition departed England and sailed for the Pacific. After visiting Australia, the Hawaiian Island (which Cook named the Sandwich Islands), and a number of other South Sea islands, Cook’s ships reached the coast of North America, which they charted while attempting to discover the Northwest Passage. In the spring of 1778, the expedition spent a month retrofitting their vessels at Nootka Sound, where Webber was active sketching landscapes and the indigenous peoples they encountered. Having charted the remainder of the North American coastline to the Bering Strait, the expedition returned in February 1779 to Hawaii, where Cook was killed following a dispute with the Hawaiians.
As an artist aboard the HMS Resolution, Webber created some 200 sketches during the four-year voyage. Upon the expedition’s return to England in 1780, Webber was commissioned to supervise the engraving of 61 of these drawings for publication in official journals, a task that took him until 1785. Between 1784 and 1792, Webber exhibited 50 works at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1785, and a Royal Academician in 1791.
Places
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Access points area
Subject access points
Place access points
Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Copied from MemoryBC on November 24, 2015 by Katie Ferrante.