Panpipes and Clubs: Early Images of Tanna Islanders

Abstract

William Hodges, James Cook’s artist on his second voyage, produced notably popular and influential drawings and paintings. These included several illustrations of Tanna Islanders (Vanuatu) that shaped European visions of the island from the 1770s through the 1830s, after which they were supplanted by Christian missionary depictions. Influenced by neoclassicist artistic convention, Hodges’s engravings, which subsequently were much copied, commonly paired panpipes with clubs in islander hands. A chain of early engravings that feature panpipes and clubs reveals an initial heroic vision of natural island dignity, as both these accessories evoked European classical ideals. Although subsequent Christian and social evolutionary views later disavowed noble savage tropes, these persist in contemporary touristic appreciation of island musical talent and tradition.