Portrait Of Edward Gibbon Wakefield

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32032, 5 July 1969, Page 20

Portrait Of Edward Gibbon Wakefield

(Contributed by the Canterbury Museum)

Overlooking the Early Christchurch Street at the Canterbury Museum hangs the portrait of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, whose system of colonisation formed the basis of the Canterbury Settlement, as well as that of many other provinces in New Zealand.

This portrait has posed many problems to the Canterbury Museum in the past. Its size and weight (it is surrounded by a heavy gilt frame and measures 12 feet by eight feet) have necessitated a very careful selection of the position of where it is to hang. It posed problems in the past too, as its presentation to the province was conditional on a suitable building being available. The picture is interesting in that it is the combined work of two English artists — J. Edgell Collins and Richard Ansdell. The portrait of Wakefield was the work of Collins and the dogs that of Ansdell. At one time the painting of the dogs was attributed to the well-known animal painter, Sir Edwin Landseer, but the story of its commissioning and the artists employed is explained in a letter Edward Jerningham Wakefield wrote to the editor of the Lyttelton Times in 1865, and which was printed on April 18 of that year.

“Sir, In a former paper, and also in your summary for England of this day, you have published a totally inaccurate account of the portrait of my late father, which is now temporarily placed in the Town Hall. When the New Zealand Company was about winding up its affairs, a number of the shareholders desired to present my father with a portrait of himself, as a token of their esteem of his services to the company and the colony. He declined for some time, but at last consented; ’to sit with his dogs if they! would paint them.’ Accord-' ingly Mr J. Edgell Collins,: R.A., was engaged to paint the picture, at, I believe, the price of 300 guineas; but after he proceeded for some time with the portrait, one of the committee remarked that he had not begun the dogs. To which Mr Collins answered that when he was engaged,

he was not instructed to paint the dogs, and that indeed he was not competent to do so, not having studied that branch of art. So that (not Sir Edwin Landseer, but) Mr Richard Ansdell (by many connoisseurs quite equal to the great animal painter) was engaged to paint the two bloodhounds and beagle into the picture. Conditional Gift “The painting became mine some years before my father’s death. About two years ago I made it over to Mr Samuel Bealey and Mr Charles Toriesse, as trustees, the conditions of the trust being that it should remain in my charge until there were a stone building in Christchurch belonging to the General Government, in which that Government should be willing to place it, when the trustees are to hand it over to the colony, on condition of its remaining there. My object is, that so perfect a portrait of the foun-

der of the colony of New Zealand should belong to the whole colony, and yet remain in that part of it where his system of colonisation has been carried out in its greatest perfection, and with the greatest success.

“When I left my residence at Coldstream a month ago, Mr W. Wilson was kind enough to procure me permission to place it, for security, in the Town Hall until its final resting place shall be determined on. There is a very handsome frame belonging to it, now in the course of being regilded.—l am, Sir, your obedient servant, E. J. Wakefield.”

The Canterbury Museum records show that the portrait was presented in 1872 by Edward Jermingham Wakefield himself. It was then hung in the position it occupies today—in the gallery of Haast’s first museum building opened in October, 1870, and now the site of the popular Early Christchurch Street. While the portrait attracts a great deal of attention to the visitor to the gallery, another exhibit in the sitting room of the cob house is rarely noticed by the passerby. This is the leather arm chair, which belonged to Edward Gibbon Walkefield and the one in which he sat for his portrait.—J.H.J.