Terrestrial Paradises: Imagery from the Voyages of Captain Cook

A series of engravings from George William Anderson’s A New, Authentic, and Complete Collection of Voyages Round the World, Undertaken and Performed by Royal Authority Containing an Authentic, Entertaining, Full, and Complete History of Captain Cook’s First, Second, Third and Last Voyages (London: Alexander Hogg, 1784-1786) and a French panoramic wallpaper, Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique (Savages of the Pacific Sea), designed and manufactured by Joseph Dufour in 1806, are examined within the context of eighteenth-century European travel imagery documenting encounters with non-Western peoples in the Pacific Islands and the Americas. The impact of Neoclassicism as an artistic movement, along with the role played by Enlightenment empiricism and scientific inquiry, provides a framework for analyzing late eighteenth-century visual understanding of world cultures. These images not only provided a context through which foreign, indigenous cultures could be better understood by a far-removed European audience, but they also helped to support and justify the movement towards nationalism and empire that had taken hold by the late eighteenth century