Captain Cook

Related to City Art

Installed 1879

City centre Public art Statues

A larger than life bronze statue of Captain James Cook rises from between a group of trees in Hyde Park

A larger than life bronze statue of Captain James Cook on a plinth in Hyde Park surrounded by trees and city buildings

A larger than life bronze statue erected in memory of Captain James Cook.

Hyde Park south

Sydney 2000

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Artist: Thomas Woolner

Artwork description

This larger than life size bronze figure shows Captain James Cook holding out a telescope in his left hand with his right hand extended upward.

The sculpture stands on a Moruya granite pedestal in Hyde Park south.

The work was commissioned on 26 September 1874 and was officially unveiled to the public on 25 February 1879.

Artist

Thomas Woolner (1825–1892) was born in Hadleigh, Suffolk and studied at the Royal Academy. He was the only sculptor as founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and had a successful career.

Woolner travelled to Australia in 1852 and went on to have limited success on the goldfields in Victoria. In 1854 he visited Sydney following the completion of a series of portrait medallions, one of which was a likeness of William Charles Wentworth for which he was commended. However, he was unsuccessful in gaining a commission to create the full length statue of Wentworth, which now stands in the Great Hall at the University of Sydney. Woolner returned to England shortly afterwards and was made a full member of the Royal Academy in 1874.

The Captain Cook sculpture was erected by public subscription, which was supplemented by government grants. Interest in erecting a statue of Cook, the first English navigator to come across the east coast of Australia, had been expressed for more than a decade.

The foundation stone was laid in 1869 but erecting the statue was beset by difficulties, not least a shortfall in subscription funds. Eventually, it seems colonial secretary Sir Henry Parkes took the matter into his own hands. In a letter dated 26 September 1874 to Thomas Woolner, Parkes requested that the well-known and prolific sculptor send a design of the statue for approval, with particulars of size and material, and the probable time required for execution. Parkes’ only major directive was that since the ‘position in Hyde Park is a very exposed one … the statue must be of bronze’.

In 1878, the ‘colossal’ statue of Captain Cook was briefly displayed ‘in the open space nearly opposite the Athenaeum Club, in Waterloo Place, Pall Mall’, before being shipped to Sydney. It was described in the British Art Journal of the time as “unquestionably a work designed with force and spirit that raise it to the character of the sensational”.

The day the sculpture was unveiled was declared a public holiday in honour of Cook and the monument. It was estimated that 12,000 people joined the procession to Hyde Park and 60,000 attended the unveiling.
- On the front face (northern side): Captain Cook. This statue was erected by public subscription assisted by a grant from the New South Wales government, 1879
- On the western side: Born at Marton in Yorkshire, 1728
- On the southern side: Discovered this territory, 1770
- On the eastern side: Killed at Owhyhee, 1779