Tahiti Revisited

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In 1776, William Hodges showed a painting entitled A View of Maitavie Bay, Otaheite at the annual Royal Academy exhibition. Hodges had been the official draughtsman onboard Captain James Cook's second Pacific voyage, and the painting shown in the summer of 1776 was one of a series of views commissioned by the Admiralty to commemorate this historic journey. Indeed, in the exhibition it was paired with A View taken in the Bay of Otaheite Peha; the two paintings recording significant sites and encounters from the voyage as well as depicting pointedly contrasting scenes of coastline and interior, industry and leisure, war and peace, male and female space. These were large and ambitious paintings, which included moralising and philosophical references and alluded to Old Master tradition as well as studies of the local topography the artist had made in situ in the South Seas. Hodges also painted variants of these paintings, incorporating Cook's ships, Resolution and Adventure, into his survey of native craft in the natural harbour of Matavai Bay, including additional allusions to mortality, to the tradition of et in Arcadia ego, in his view of tattooed female bathers relaxing in Vaitepeha Bay.1 At some point in the nineteenth century, this latter painting was graced with the title ‘Tahiti Revisited’, making the parallels across time and space implied by Hodges’ views still more explicit.