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Design Review: Volume 3, Issue 4 (January-February 1951)

Early New Zealand Prints

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Early New Zealand Prints

The illustrations to this article are chiefly examples of better-known architectural and topographical prints. The author will complete the series in later issues with notes on rarer botanical prints and prints depicting ‘social occasions.’ The more technical aspects of print-making and collecting will also be discussed.

The left-hand picture is by Charles Heaphy showing sawyers at work in a kauri forest near Kaipara.

The left-hand picture is by Charles Heaphy showing sawyers at work in a kauri forest near Kaipara.

An engraving by S. L. Paydon of the Nelson Provincial Government Building in 1861. The present state of this building will be the subject of an article in a future issue.

An engraving by S. L. Paydon of the Nelson Provincial Government Building in 1861. The present state of this building will be the subject of an article in a future issue.

Photographs by courtesy of The Turnbull Library

page 97
The Wesleyan chapel and mission house at Wellington in the 1840's, a steel engraving by S. C. Brees.

The Wesleyan chapel and mission house at Wellington in the 1840's, a steel engraving by S. C. Brees.

In Victorian England it was desirable for the politely educated lady or gentleman to have command of the brush — to master the arts of water-colouring or drawing. To this accomplishment, then, all New Zealanders owe a debt of gratitude, for it has left us with a rich legacy of pictures, of varying excellence perhaps, but of much value in reconstructing a byegone age. It is a fact that many of the early visitors to these shores, explorers, sailors, scientists and missionaries, were amateurs who had achieved some skill in the pursuit of a congenial hobby. The astonishing thing is that the standard of craftsmanship was so high. Most of these efforts were never reproduced or published, but many of them were, with the happy result that it is possible to build up a collection of New Zealand prints and engravings dating from the late eighteenth century.

For the purpose of this short article it is convenient to divide the subject into three parts-prints topographical, botanical and social. This account must serve merely as an introduction, and a sketchy one at that, to a subject almost inexhaustible in its possibilities and interest. Granted it is difficult to find in New Zealand examples for sale of these early printings, nevertheless libraries all over the country are rich in their collections. Here the prints can be studied at leisure, taste for them developed, and eventually, perhaps, acquisition of a few be achieved through catalogue buying from London.

The first pictorial account of New Zealand was published as early as 1726 with Valentyn's engravings, followed much later by the literature and illustrations surrounding Cook's three voyages — Parkinson's engravings of Hawkesworth's “Account”, 1773, being among the best known. Then come Hodges and Webber, artists more in the romantic vein. French explorers followed the English and left a profusion of records both pictorial and written.

With the coming of the missionaries, inevitably other Englishmen followed. Most notable among these early recorders of the New Zealand scene was Augustus Earle, who in 1832 published his Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence. Earle was a fine painter and, “like French artists before him, saw the Maoris as beings of an earlier heroic age — a conception that is beautifully page break conveyed in his painting”.1

The New Zealand Company played an important part in the cultural history of the country. The Company brought the artists and writers here in the first place, either as settlers or employees — “for more than a decade, and particularly in its early prosperous years, the Company acted as a generous patron of the arts, organizing expeditions into the interior, encouraging its servants to record what they saw, publishing the results in handsome books and lavish folios”.2 Charles Heaphy, appointed as draughtsman to the Company, was an artist of great merit and distinction. It was his duty to depict the Company's settlements to give intending emigrants some idea of the kind of life they were coming to. His paintings were reproduced in England and used as a form of poster or advertisement. The first printings are now rare and have become much sought for by collectors. Heaphy was a great artist, possessed of imagination and sensitivity, deeply aware of the magnificence of the scene about him, and his painting reflects his depth of
C. D. Barraud's lithograph of the Maori Church at Otaki, until lately the most beautiful public building in New Zealand. Unhappily, recent restoration has brought changes, among them the substitution of reeded glass for the fine old lead-light windows.

C. D. Barraud's lithograph of the Maori Church at Otaki, until lately the most beautiful public building in New Zealand. Unhappily, recent restoration has brought changes, among them the substitution of reeded glass for the fine old lead-light windows.

A lithograph of Lyttelton from the early colonists' collection at the Canterbury Museum.

A lithograph of Lyttelton from the early colonists' collection at the Canterbury Museum.

Another of Brees' engravings. It shows Tinakori Road, Wellington, in the 'forties.

Another of Brees' engravings. It shows Tinakori Road, Wellington, in the 'forties.

page 99 feeling. Many of his colleagues in the Company's employ, surveyors or draughtsmen, were also artists — men such as Brees, Mein Smith and Barnicoat have left many delightful sketches by which to judge them. There are many distinguished names in the art annals of the day among the early arrivals in the colony: Swainson, a collection of whose beautiful little drawings are to be seen in the National Art Galley, Wellington; Gilfillan and Angas were two other painters of great merit whose work was reproduced in England. Later came Gully, Barraud, Chevalier, Hoyte, Kinder, Nairn and Buchanan, to name only the best known. These men were eloquent — their painting was executed with particular honesty and thoroughness, they described with the brush the wild landscape about them. If there was nothing bold or impressionistic about their work, their methods were nevertheless founded upon a sound technique — a technique which enabled them to express the scene with unambiguous clarity and accuracy. For this reason their pictures are historically valuable, and to us this is all important. When we look at Swainson's drawings of the Hutt Valley in the early forties we know we are looking at the country as it actually was, presented to us in a charming and realistic manner. If we peer closely into Heaphy's prints of Wellington in 1840, or, better still, visit the originals in the Turnbull Library, then we find ourselves transported into that raw little village of weatherboard cottages clinging timidly to the edge of beach — we see the bullock cart, the canoe being hauled up not far from the Bank of New Zealand corner. There are the Maoris, the gentlemen settlers in the costume of the time, the goatherds, all weaving into the panorama a perfect representation of the capital a hundred and ten years ago.

As the early written accounts and records provide us with the detail of life then, so these prints put it into graphic form. We ourselves, and the generations after, may thank the accomplished Englishmen who left in their paintings a legacy to any New Zealander interested enough in his country to wish to learn something of its origins.

1 McCormick: Letters and Art in New Zealand.

2 Ibid.