A View of Matavai Bay in the Island of Otaheite [Tahiti]

In 1772 William Hodges took to sea on the HMS Resolution as official artist on Captain James Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific. In August of 1773, the explorers arrived in Tahiti, where the artist encountered a spectacular natural beauty and fecundity. Hodges later used his sketches to create resplendent paintings that were instrumental in establishing the vision of Polynesia as an untainted tropical paradise in the European mind’s eye. This classical depiction of Matavai Bay would seem to equate Tahiti with a mythical Arcadia. Nowhere in this picture can one glimpse a Western officer or vessel. Rather, the focus is on the physical and sensual ease of the young Tahitian men in the foreground and the three magnificent Tahitian war galleys in the middle and far distance.