06/12/2025
Our first lecture on 2026 will be: 27th January 2026
The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages
Between 1768 and his death in 1779, Captain Cook led three voyages of exploration to the Pacific. The purposes of the expeditions were framed in terms of modern Enlightenment notions of scientific observation, and a key part of this was the appointment of official artists – a new departure for such enterprises – the aim being (in Cook’s words) to address ‘the unavoidable imperfections of written accounts, by enabling us to preserve, and to bring home, such drawings of the most memorable scenes of our transactions’.
In this lecture, we shall look at a range of examples of how these artists recorded the places visited, the events experienced, and the people and flora and fauna encountered on the voyages. We will explore how they dealt with the novel surroundings they encountered and consider how their work went on to shape European understanding of those settings.
Speaker: Prasannajit de Silva:
Prasannajit de Silva completed his doctorate in 2007, researching the art of the British in India during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His lecturing covers British visual culture of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, including art produced in various colonial settings. He is particularly interested in the relationship of aspects of art, architecture, and design to their broader cultural, social, and political contexts, and also teaches courses on the methods and theoretical approaches of art history.
