(1751-1793), Landscape painter, was an English artist best known for his images of early Alaska and Hawaii. Webber was born on October 6, 1751 in London, educated in Switzerland and studied painting at Paris[2]. Webber served as official artist on Captain James Cook??s third voyage of discovery around the Pacific (1776-1780) aboard HMS Resolution. At Adventure Bay in January 1777 he did drawings of "A Man of Van Diemen's Land" and "A Woman of Van Diemen's Land". He also did many drawings of scenes in New Zealand and the South Sea islands. On this voyage, during which Cook lost his life in a fight in Hawaii, Webber became the first European artist to make contact with Hawaii, then called the Sandwich Islands. He made numerous watercolor landscapes of the islands of Kauai and Hawaii, and also portrayed many of the Hawaiian people. Back in England in 1780 Webber exhibited around 50 works at Royal Academy exhibitions between 1784 and 1792, and was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1785 and R.A. in 1791. Most of his work were landscapes. Sometimes figures were included as in "A Party from H.M.S. Resolution shooting sea horses", which was shown at the academy in 1784, and his "The Death of Captain Cook" became well known through an engraving of it. Another version of this picture is in the William Dixson gallery at Sydney. Webber died in London in 1793.   Related Paintings of John Webber :. | A Chief of the Sandwich Islands | John Webber s oil painting Abbey Mill Shrewsbury | The Tahitian Princess Poedua | Captain Cook | Head and shoulders portrait of a young Tahitian male |
Related Artists:
Leonard Defrance
Flemish Painter, 1735-1805
John Ponsford
(1790- 1870 ) painted Portrait of a gentleman. Signed and dated Ponsford 1842
John Rogers Herbert
English historical painter and portraitist . British, 1810-1890. was an English painter who is most notable as a precursor of Pre-Raphaelitism. Herbert was born in Maldon, Essex. In 1825, he moved to London to study at the Royal Academy. His early works were influenced by the troubadour style of Richard Parkes Bonington. Subjects showed the influence of Byron and exotic episodes of Venetian history. Haydee (1834) depicted the heroine of Byron's poem Don Juan. Herbert's first major success was The Appointed Hour (1835), depicting a melodramatic scene in which a Venetian man lies murdered at the place appointed for a tryst with his lover. The work became a popular engraving. Herbert followed it with other dramatic subjects such as A Prisoner of Condottieri Freed (1836) and Desdemona asks for Cassio (1838). After he was chosen to paint a portrait of Princess Victoria, before she became queen, he became a favourite portrait painter of the aristocracy. Around this time, he came under the influence of the architect William Payne, a convert to Catholicism. In 1840, Herbert also converted to the Catholic Church. He then painted mainly religious subjects in a style influenced by the artists of the Nazarene movement. Herbert was elected to membership of the Royal Academy in 1846. Herbert's paintings The First Introduction of Christianity into Great Britain (1842) and Our Saviour Subject to his Parents in Nazareth (1847) were the inspiration for the two most important early works of William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, founders of Pre-Raphaelitism. The two paintings, Hunt's A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary and Millais' Christ in the House of His Parents were exhibited at the RA in 1850 to great controversy.