The Many Faces of Captain Cook

Come and discover the face of Cook and how his image has been used over the last 200 years in this new temporary exhibition at The Captain Cook Birthplace Museum.

It includes paintings, engravings, prints, ceramics, coins, medals, stamps, cards, miscellanea and book illustrations. Centrepiece of the exhibition is a copy of John Webber’s stunning portrait of Cook, one of only three oil paintings of Captain James Cook executed from life, used with the permission of the National Museum in New Zealand (Te Papa Tongarewa), Wellington, New Zealand. The portrait was originally in the collection of North-East industrialist Henry Bolckow who displayed it in his home, Marton Hall, now the site of the Birthplace Museum, Stewart Park. It was finally sold to the government of New Zealand in 1960 and is now housed in the National Museum of New Zealand.

The exhibition also includes: the loan of a Cook Gold Medal from the Royal Collection Trust by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen (The medal is one that was given to King George III by The Royal Society when it was struck in memory of Captain James Cook in 1785): four original engravings of Captain Cook from the National Portrait Gallery in London (by Thornton, Basire, Pigeot and Hogg); the loan of a rare 1840 Staffordshire Portrait Figurine of Cook from The Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead; loans from private collections as well as the museum’s own core collection.

This exhibition is part of celebrations for the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum, Stewart Park, Marton, Middlesbrough on 27th October 1978 and coincides with the 280th Anniversary of Cook’s birth, and 80 years since Frank Elgee organised the Captain Cook Bicentenary Exhibition at Marton Hall, then a branch of the Dorman Museum. Two of the exhibits seen in the 1928 exhibition, the Webber portrait and the Wedgwood plaque after John Flaxman R. A. (1755 –1826) are exhibited in the current exhibition.