King of Manihiki with Island Judge on Right Hand

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

19775

Title

p. 14, King of Manihiki with island judge on right hand, in front a beachcomber

Description

A group is arranged in front of big house with a grass roof on Manihiki Island. The King of Manihiki stands in the centre with a black robe on; a star around his neck and a crown of pandanus leaves around his head. The Island Judge stands on his right who has his hand on a child that stands between them. Tin Jack is seated on his left, wearing a straw hat, cropped trousers and no shoes. A beachcomber sits on the sand in front of them, wearing a big square woven cape. Islanders can be seen in the background, sitting under the shelter of the house's roof.

Artist / maker

Osbourne, Lloyd

Date

1890

Size

18 x 21.3 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

Manihiki Island is part of the Cook Islands and is situated in the South Pacific Ocean, north-east of New Zealand, between French Polynesia and Fiji.

Robert Louis Stevenson based the character of Tommy Haddon in his novel 'The Wrecker' on Tin Jack (Jack Buckland).

On 11th April 1890 Robert Louis Stevenson his wife Fanny and her son Lloyd Osbourne set off aboard the steamer Janet Nicoll from Sydney for a three-month trading voyage through the Pacific. The ship was under charter to Messrs Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, a well known trading firm The travelled through the Cook, Gilbert, Ellice and Marshall Islands, arriving at Noumea, New Caledonia on the 26th July.

Born in Edinburgh on 13th November 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and travel writer. Although he was plagued by ill health all his life, he was extraordinarily well-travelled, visiting Europe, America and the South Seas. He married American born Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and is best-known for works like Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (both 1886). From the late 1880s, Stevenson stayed in the South Pacific with his family on his own estate in Vailima in Samoa. He died here on the 3rd December 1894 of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 44, leaving what many consider his best work, Weir of Hermiston (1896) unfinished.

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Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Garments > Capes

Homes > Residential buildings > Houses

People > Politics and government > Judges

People > Politics and government > Kings

Places > Oceania > Cook Islands

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