TitleCocoanut Grove and Temple, Fakaafo (Bowditch Island)
Artist
Alfred Thomas Agate
(American, 1812 - 1846)
Date1841
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 10 × 14 1/2 in.
Framed: 18 × 21 1/2 × 3 in.
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, Gift of James D. Smillie, 1902
Object number12-P
Label TextOn the evening of January 28, 1841, the Wilkes Expedition arrived at an uncharted island several hundred miles north of Samoa. Wilkes christened the island "Bowditch," after the American navigator Nathaniel Bowditch. The island has since reverted to its native name, Fakaafo. In his Narrative Wilkes provides a lengthy description of the island, its inhabitants, and their dwellings. He describes the temple and idols depicted in Agate's painting with considerable attention:
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The most remarkable building was that which they said was their "tui-tokelau" [house of their god]. This stood in the centre [of the grove], and was of an oblong shape, fifty by thirty-five feet, and about twenty feet in height.
The edifice contained but little furniture. . . . Their gods, or idols-tui-tokelau-were placed on the outside, near by. The largest of these was fourteen feet high and eighteen inches in diameter. This was covered or enveloped in mats. . . . The smaller idol was of stone, and four feet high, but only partially covered with mats.
[end of block quote]
Wilkes credited Agate for his fine representation of the scene. The painting was subsequently engraved for Wilkes's Narrative, where it appears under the title "Cocoanut Grove at Fakaafo" or "Bowditch I."
How the painting came into the possession of the engraver and Academician James Smillie is unknown. On his death in 1885 it passed to his son, James D. Smillie, who also was an Academician. Academy records state that the painting carries the inscription "1840" on the reverse of the canvas (now obscured by the mounting board), a number long accepted as the authoritative dating of the work. Clearly this inscription was applied by an unknown hand-possibly the elder Smillie's-as a well-intentioned but ill-informed guess.
