Tuhituhi

de Laurence Simmons

Tuhituhi follows the geographical and chronological progress of Cook's voyage on the Resolution, for which William Hodges was hired as official artist, a landscape painter. In the Pacific, painters like Hodges found themselves staring again and again in disbelief at landscapes and seascapes that stretched 18th-century conventions of painting (such as the picturesque, the sublime, and the beautiful). Each chapter of this book focuses on the close reading of a significant painting by Hodges of a South Pacific location and opens fresh theoretical perspectives on the representational problems raised by these early Pacific works. The final chapter considers the important influence of Hodges work on a series of paintings by the major twentieth-century New Zealand painter Colin McCahon.--Cover.