The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages by Rudiger Joppien; Bernard Smith; European Vision andthe South Pacific by Bernard SmithReview by: Barbara M. StaffordIsis, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), p. 328Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/232663 .

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328 REVIEWS ON SCIENCE AND ART-ISIS, 77: 2: 287 (1986)

Rudiger Joppien; Bernard Smith. The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages. Volume I: The Voyage of the Endeavour, 1768-1771. xv + 247 pp., plates, illus., figs., bibl., index. Volume II: The Voyage of the Resolution and Adventure, 1772-1775. xiii + 274 pp., plates, illus., figs., bibl., index. New Haven/London: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1985. $50 each.

Bernard Smith. European Vision and the South Pacific. xiii + 370 pp., plates, illus., figs., bibls., index. Second edition. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1985. $45.

Twenty years ago Bernard Smith first published his eye-opening study in the his- tory of ideas, Eluropean Vision and the South Pacific. The handsomely illustrated second edition-more socially aware and polemical in tone-reemphasizes two major themes that the author felt did not receive serious discussion by the reviewers in 1964. These were, first, the importance of evolu- tionary theory with its political implication of natural selection as an instrument of Eu- ropean power, and, second, the thesis that the predominant mode of nineteenth- century landscape painting arose from the eighteenth-century explorer's need to de- scribe the typical or the characteristic in nature. Much work has subsequently been done both here and abroad, and in a wide variety of disciplines, on landscape percep- tion and travel literature in general, thanks in large measure to the stimulus provided by the first edition. While little of this new material finds its way into the text or the bibliography, the splendid color reproduc- tions (especially of the work of Charles- Alexandre Lesueur) eminently justify an- other edition. The argument of the book, however, pretty much stands as it stood.

For an extension and continuation of the master interests and themes first articulated in European Vision, Smith has now been joined by the German art historian Rudiger Joppien in the heroic task of creating a cat- aloglue raisonne of the art produced on Cook's three voyages. The first two vol- umes, superbly published by Yale Univer- sity Press, are out and make one eagerly await the third.

Both the account of the voyage of the Endeav,our in 1768-1771 and that of the Resoluition in 1772-1775 are prefaced by a series of chapter-essays focusing on the

difficulty of interpreting the unknown and on the differences between the talents at work on either voyage (chiefly Sidney Par- kinson versus William Hodges). The au- thors wrestle with the problem of dis- tinguishing between drawings made for recording specific natural history informa- tion and those with a "picturesque" intent made in response to the general beauty of a place. Further, to account for the sympa- thetic nature of the ethnographic portraits made in the South Seas, they reach the im- portant conclusion that the artist, unlike the other "experimental gentlemen," had to cultivate cordial and respectful relations with his sitters in order to take their like- nesses. Both in the landscapes and in the portraits drawn and painted during and after the voyages, Smith and Joppien note, a new form of perception arose, based on close observation and reflective judgment rather than on a set of preconceived rules. Hodges in particular, encouraged by the scientific interest in exact information of the German naturalists Johann and Georg Forster, managed on occasion to break with neoclassical conventions of represen- tation.

The reader is left with an acute sense for the monumental struggle experienced by these artists as they tried to cope and de- velop painterly techniques that would in some measure be adequate to the diverse visual problems they confronted in the Pa- cific. Historians of science as well as art historians must be deeply grateful for the comprehensive presentation and subtle analysis of art made for a purpose and as a result of direct empirical study.

BARBARA M. STAFFORD

Edward C. Carter II; John C. Van Horne; Charles E. Brownell (Editors); Tina H. Sheller (Associate Editor). Latroheb's Views of America, 1795-1820: Selections fr-om the Watercolors and Sketches. With the as- sistance of Stephen F. Lintner, J. Frederick Fausz, and Geraldine C. Vickers. (The Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Series 3.) xxi + 400 pp., illus., bibl., index. New Haven/London: Yale University Press for the Maryland Historical Society, 1985. $30.

Science in the United States after the Revolutionary War was, even at the best of times, a precarious occupation. The Con- stitution, ratified in Philadelphia in 1787, complimented science as a praiseworthy

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