Captain James Cook, 1728-79

Nathaniel Dance-Holland painted Captain James Cook in 1775, shortly after Cook's return from his second Pacific voyage, which had definitively disproved the existence of a habitable southern continent. This portrait became the defining image of the great navigator, widely reproduced in engravings and deeply familiar to the British public. Cook was departing on his third and fatal voyage to the Pacific the following year, and would die in Hawaii in 1779 — giving this portrait a posthumous significance as the last major likeness made from life. Dance-Holland had trained in Rome under Mengs and Batoni, and his portraits combined the formal conventions of Grand Manner portraiture with a cooler, more austere sculptural quality derived from his classical studies. The Royal Museums Greenwich holds this as one of its most important paintings, a document of Britain's greatest explorer at the height of his career and reputation.

Dance presents Cook with directness and simplicity, avoiding grandiloquence in favor of honest characterization. The plain background and naval uniform focus attention on Cook's weather-beaten face.