View of Oaitepeha Bay, Tahiti
William Hodges RA (London 1744 - Brixham 1797)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1776 (signed and dated) - 1776 (exh at RA)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
900 x 1356 mm
Place of origin
Tahiti (French Polynesia : Island)
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 515553
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, View of Oaitepeha Bay, Tahiti, by William Hodges RA (London 1744 - Brixham 1797), signed and dated Hodges - 76, exh. RA 1776. A view taken in the Bay of Otaheite Peha, with towering peaks in the background and Vaitepiha River in the foreground. A bather floats on her back in the centre foreground, whilst another bather, tattooed, sits on an a rock at right, drying herself with a towel beside a caved wooden ti'i (a deified ancestral figure). The river winds through a wooded area adjacent to a settlement, a low building thatched with palm, perhaps a meeting house, at centre. At far right is a tupapau, a small elevated platform bearing a shrouded corpse. Exhibited at the 1776 Royal Academy exhibition with A View of Matavai Bay in the Island of Otaheite (Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, acc. no. B1981.25.343). A second version of the present picture is in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (no. BHC2396).
Provenance
H. T de Vere Clifton (?); sale, Christie's, November 19, 1948 (162), one of a pair (the other: Tahitian War Galleys in Matavai Bay, Tahiti is now in the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art) of pictures to Spink for £ 23; bequeathed to the National Trust by Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
William Hodges RA (London 1744 - Brixham 1797), artist
Exhibition history
Entangled Pasts: 1768 - now, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2024
References
Stuebe 1979 Isabel Combs Stuebe, Life and Works of William Hodges, Garland Publishing, 1979, fig,. 56 Stuebe 1979 Isabel Combs Stuebe, Life and Works of William Hodges, Garland Publishing, 1979, no. 79 Quilley and Bonehill 2004: Geoff Quilley and John Bonehill, William Hodges 1744-1797: the Art of Exploration, exh.cat. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, 2004-5, New Haven and London 2004, no. 32, p. 122 Solkin 2015 David H. Solkin, Art in Britain 1660 - 1815, Pelican History of Art, Yale University Press, 2015, p. 224, fig. 226
