KEY ARTISTS:
Earle, Heaphy & Kinder
KEY MEANINGS:
Sense of place
Cultural
Spiritual and religious beliefs
Social and everyday life
KEY CONTEXTS:
Geographic |
Historical |
Social |
Cultural |
New Zealand land and sea as the subject of European exploration and survey for its prospect of being a new British colony.
The visual documentation by artists was important as it was a time before the invention of photography. Topographical works captured a geographic sense of places in New Zealand, while other amateur paintings reflected the European viewpoints on the new land and sea being observed and studied. |
Exploration: pre-colonial records of Maori and cultural exchange.
Settlement: The establishment of the New Zealand Company in 1838 - paintings were produced to send back to Britain to attract more settlers. Colonisation: The Treaty was signed in 1840 and the colonisation process gained further momentum. |
Earle's paintings from the time of 'Exploration' indicate a sense of Maori life in pre-colonial period.
Works from the period of 'Settlement' (NZ Company) and 'Colonisation' demonstrate the establishment of European colonial society and environments in New Zealand e.g. showing features that indicate the development of European communities such as churches, houses, farmlands, fencing and roads etc. |
The depictions of pre-colonial Maori and European cultural exchange are shown in Earle's paintings. They also provide a glimpse into what Maori life must have been like before colonisation took a full swing. Since establishment of the NZ Company, we see the absence of Maori culture as the artists focus intentionally on the rendering of European colonial culture in New Zealand.
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Articles on Contexts
The Treaty Of Waitangi |
The Aotearoa History Show - Episode 8 | Colonists & Courts |
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Entrance to the Bay of Islands 1827
Distant View of the Bay of Islands 1827
The Meeting of the Artist & the Wounded Chief Hongi 1827
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EXPLORATION: THE WANDERING ARTISTAugustus Earle (1793-1838) Augustus Earle was born in London, England. There is no evidence to confirm that Earle studied at the Royal Academy but he may have been taught by the president of the academy, Benjamin West, whose studio was near Earle's childhood home. Classical, genre and historical paintings by Earle were hung in six Royal Academy exhibitions between 1806 and 1814. From 1818 to 1824 he travelled through many places including the United States, Brazil, Chile and Peru, eventually making his way to Australia. For two years Earle lived a fashionable but busy life in Sydney, opening a gallery, giving lessons in painting and selling drawing materials. On his travels in New South Wales he made sensitive studies of Aborigines and published lithographs. His paintings were primarily documentary and topographical.
Earle painted accurate representations of Maori customs, occasions and domestic scenes. Earle was determined to know more about the Maori, some of whom he had met in Sydney. In October 1827 he sailed on the Governor Macquarie and spent eight months between Hokianga and the Bay of Islands. He was convinced that no native race he had studied on his travels could compare with the New Zealanders, that 'splendid race of men' with 'a natural elegance and ease of manner'. He found that although the Maori were warlike, often cruel, and sometimes treacherous, they were brave and chivalrous and also generous, faithful friends. He admired their physique and could not forgive the missionaries for seeking to hide such naked splendour in European clothing for the sake of modesty and morality. He praised their 'busy enquiring minds', was fascinated by the complexity of their character, impressed by their artistry in carving and by their mastery of the art of warfare. He likened Hongi Hika to a Homeric hero. Earle's published works include A narrative of a nine months' residence in New Zealand in 1827 (1832), one of the best descriptions of New Zealand before colonisation. His last work, Sketches illustrative of the native inhabitants and islands of New Zealand, a series of 10 hand-coloured lithographs, was published in 1838. Augustus Earle was probably the first English freelance painter to travel the world. He was the first European artist to establish himself for a time in New Zealand and make a prolonged study of a part of the country and a number of its people. teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1e1/earle-augustus |
Mount Egmont From the Southward 1840
Town of Wellington 1841
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SETTLEMENT: SURVEY & ATTRACT - PROPAGANDIST FOR THE NZ COMPANYCharles Heaphy (1820-1881)Heaphy was a noted artist who executed several works of early colonial life in New Zealand.
Born in England, Heaphy joined the New Zealand Company in 1839. He arrived in New Zealand later that year and was commissioned to create art for advertising the country to potential English migrants. Much of the next two and half years was spent travelling and executing paintings of landscapes and life around the centre of the country. Heaphy's contract with the company was for three years and his primary role was to create art that could be used as advertising for the company. In doing so he travelled extensively around the country. He also sailed around parts of the country aboard the Tory and learned surveying from its captain. Heaphy painted a variety of subjects including landscapes, flora and fauna. The success of the company depended on attracting emigrants to New Zealand so his work was almost always intended to present the country and its inhabitants in its best light. To achieve this, Heaphy's works often featured:
From October 1840, Heaphy was based in Wellington and with a friend built a small cottage, that allowed him to execute several views of Wellington Harbour, which was much used in advertising for the New Zealand Company. A few months later, in early 1841, he joined Arthur Wakefield on the expedition that led to the founding of Nelson. Heaphy was among several employees of the New Zealand Company to scout the area around Tasman Bay, before the location for Nelson was decided and executed several paintings highlighting the quality of the land intended for settlement. By late 1841, Heaphy's services as an artist were no longer required, given the number of works that he had produced and Wakefield decided to send him to London, to make a report to the company directors. He took nearly six months to reach London, by which time his three-year contract had expired. The directors were impressed with his report and it was published as a book entitled Narrative of a Residence in Various Parts of New Zealand. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Heaphy |
19th CENTURY COLONIAL LANDSCAPE:
'God in Nature' - Colonial Christianity
The 19th century landscape painters of New Zealand worked within an established language or set of conventions. The governing idea was that nature was God’s handiwork. The role of the painter was to reveal that handiwork. To portray this ideal world painters drew on the ideas of 17th-century French painter Claude Lorraine, using:
- a high viewpoint revealing a distant horizon
- dark brown foreground and side (often featuring trees)
- overlapping planes
- a golden glow and a distant blue horizon.
This ‘Claudian grammar’ was used even by amateur watercolourists who were primarily interested in topographic and picturesque representation. Some examples include Auckland school teacher John Kinder, who documented exact features in the landscapes but whose paintings have a Claudian golden glow; and fellow Aucklander Alfred Sharpe, who spoke loudly through his paint in a Claudian language of dark foregrounds and blue distances.
New Zealand landscape painters had New Zealand subjects, but they looked at the landscape through the eyes of European convention.
Colonial landscape paintings served the following purposes:
- Celebrating a successful colonisation
- Christianising of the land to authenticate the colonisation process as being approved by God
- To further promote New Zealand as being a desirable place to live
teara.govt.nz/en/painting/page-2
St Pauls, Auckland 1856
Onehunga, Manukau Harbour and Heads 1860
One Tree Hill and Epsom from Mount Eden, Auckland - photograph
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THE ARTIST'S GOSPEL TO AUTHENTICATE COLONISATIONJohn Kinder (1819-1903)John Kinder was born in 1819 at London, England. John's interest in art began early and he learned the principles of watercolour painting and related disciplines such as perspective.
In 1855 Kinder was ordained as a priest and was interviewed by Bishop G. A. Selwyn for the new position of headmaster at the Church of England Grammar School to be established at Auckland, New Zealand. He was accepted, and in July 1855 sailed with his mother and sister Fanny for New Zealand. He was never to return to England. In New Zealand Kinder expanded his activity as a painter, responding to the challenge of his new environment. One of his first tasks was to make a map of inner Auckland, inscribed with figures identifying related sketches of the town which he painted about 1856–57. The views are topographical, showing the new houses, streets and especially the buildings of the Anglican church. For Kinder, the works have a personal dimension relating to places he knew and interests he favoured. These early drawings, while often taking an architectural focus, have a deep landscape setting with atmospheric effects. An example is 'St Paul's. Auckland. 1856'. In 1857 Kinder moved with his mother and sister into the headmaster's house at 2 Ayr Street, Parnell, now known as Kinder House. While he was at Ayr Street Kinder also practised as an amateur photographer. Kinder was primarily a landscape and architectural photographer, although he did take a few portraits of family and friends. He took photographs of Parnell in the 1860s, especially of Anglican buildings such as the first St Mary's Church, St Stephen's Chapel and Bishopscourt (Selwyn Court). These provide a good historical record as well as having high artistic merit. Kinder also travelled extensively and his paintings and photographs are not confined to Auckland. In his photographs and paintings Kinder imposed a sense of order on his views, as if regulating them to current conventions of composition where clarity and intelligibility were paramount. This tidiness, combined with the serene calmness of the depicted weather conditions, can give a Utopian or idealised dimension to his colonial scenes. While there is a high degree of objectivity in his works, this does not exclude an element of interpretation – an adaptation of landforms and buildings to an ideal. His art expresses a positive view of the colonising process. It is worth noting that many of his finished paintings were made late in life, during his retirement, when he was looking back through rose-tinted glasses to a time of great achievement and rapid progress. In an unpublished autobiography, written in his later years, he recalled with pride how the city of Auckland had grown from the humble beginnings he encountered in 1855, when there were only one or two decent buildings to be seen. John Kinder died at his home in Remuera on 5 September 1903, and was buried in the graveyard at St John's College. teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2k7/kinder-john |