French naval officer-artist was charmed by Akaroa

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32637, 19 June 1971, Page 11

French naval officer-artist was charmed by Akaroa

(By

B. M. CAMPBELL)

“Nature is charming enough everywhere, but Akaroa Harbour is the most charming place from every point of view.”

So wrote Charles Meryon, a young ensign in the French corvette Le Rhin while on station at Akaroa in the years 1843-46.

How delightful it would be to leave—at this very moment —the hustle and bustle of the city for a boating cruise of the Banks Peninsula bays, following the coast and each night entering a snug and sheltered inlet to sup by the campfire and sleep under the stars!

This is exactly what Charles Meryon was doing when he wrote the lines above, in the following letter home to his father, about the year 1844. “A week ago we made an expedition round the Peninsula, primarily as an excursion, and, in the second place in order to determine the contour of the coast and bays. During the day we followed the coast, and at night we went into some bay to sup and sleep there. You will understand this was an agreeable way of doing things. The weather was almost always favourable, and, except for one day in which we were tossed about and soaked from head to foot by a strong ’north-east wind, our litle voyage was accomplished without serious incident. At Pigeon Bay, one of the places where we stayed, we had the pleasure of stuffing ourselves with milk, drawn warm from the cow by the little rosy hands of two young girls whom I could willingly have kissed with all my heart.” Early talent Meryon, who had shown a talent for drawing before entering the French Naval School at Brest in 1837, at the age of 16, wrote in another letter from Akaroa: "I do not wish to lose my time here, and as I want to employ it as usefully as possible .. . I mean to do many things. I propose to study history, occupy myself a little with politics, and continue drawing and painting. I have already made some sketches from which I hope to have some good results in the future.”

Meryon, on his return to France, feared that his health would not stand the rigours of naval life, and took lessons in painting. In 1848, however, he abandoned painting for engraving, having discovered that he was partly colour-blind. For the rest of his short life, he devoted himself to etching, and has long been recognised as one of the greatest masters of the art.

Four etchings of Akaroa, all dated 1845—including the one above: “The Thatched

Cottage of an Old Soldier Colonist”—are included in a now-rare portfolio by Meryon published in 1866. Other etchings, accompanying these, are of scenes in New Caledonia and the Wallis Islands. Sets of the etchings are held by the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, and the Canterbury Museum. Charles Meryon was bom in 1821, the illegitimate son of a Parisian opera dancer, Pierre-Narcisse Chaspoux, and of an English doctor, Charles Lewis Meryon, who had been physician and secretary to Lady Hester Stanhope, the eccentric English traveller of some note. Although young Meryon displayed talent for drawing, he entered the Naval School at Brest and from 1837 to 1846 served in the French

Navy. After a voyage to the East in 1839, he was inspired by the examples of Greek art that he saw to take further instruction in art Meryon was an ensign aboard the corvette Le Rhin on her voyage around the world in 1842-46. Arrival in Akaroa The vessel arrived at Akaroa in January 1843. A week later, her commander, PostCaptain A. Berard took over command of the Akaroa station from Captain C. F. Levaud, who had come to the French colony in 1840 in the corvette Aube to protect French interests, and the French whaling fleet in the Pacific. The corvette Le Rhin remained on station at Akaroa until August, 1846 making annual cruises to the French possessions in the Pacific.

From his letters, we learn that Meryon was most favourably impressed by the beauty of the natural scene he found at Akaroa, and interested in the Maoris, “with their strange type of countenance and costume.” His account of Akaroa, with much emphasis upon the bush and birds he so admired, was accompanied by many sketches of Maori figures. Meryon writes of “the tall fems whose roots serve for a long time as the basis of the natives’ food,” and of the moving, rustling foliage of the flax bushes “whose flexible leaves are transformed in the hands of the natives into threads shining like silk.” He loved to listen “to the song of the pretty birds commonly known as tuis"—and he was also partial to the “excellent eels” of New Zealand.

His art gave the young

naval officer an escape from the boredom suffered by his companions, some of whom resigned from the service in desperation. Meryon wrote from Akaroa to his father: "We are always very quiet and very little disturbed by outside things and events. The colony is very sad, very poor, very little interesting in itself; the colonists are rather miserable, not very hardworking, not very ingenious, riot very industrious, and it is not in them we find the few distractions we have.”

In March, 1844, he continued: “I have already given you some details about the colony which will make you understand that one must be a philosopher of a very special kind not to be bored to extinction. The only distractions we have are excursions, fishing, etc., and the weather is not always as good as it might be.”

But the weather had been kind for the round-the-bays trip described above. Continuing his account of this pleasant excursion, Meryon wrote:

“In all, we visited six different harbours in this one peninsula, four of which are very good, and would be safe for quite large ships. In one of them. Port Levy, there is an important Maori pa—the largest of all, it is said. In general, nature is charming enough everywhere, but, without contradiction, Akaroa Harbour is the most

charming place from every point of view. Each having its own peculiarity, I was commissioned to sketch the most remarkable features, but I did not do much, as I could not find a convenient place to work from.”

This was a pity, for drawings and sketches of Canterbury and peninsula scenes in the 1840 s are all too few.

Study of etching

Back in France towards the end of 1846, Meryon took up his lessons in painting, but in 1848 abandoned this for engraving. He studied etching under Blery, and for practice made studies after Dutch etchers, particularly Zeeman and Adrian van der Velden. But in his own day, like so many great artists of genius, his talent was but little recognised. He had great difficulty in selling his work, even for a few francs —say, lOd a piece. Yet 40 years after his death, first and second-stage Meryon prints were selling for as much as £2OO.

Last month, the Christchurch City Council bought a Meryon etching, “La Rue de Mauvais Garcons,” for the sum of $56.

This is one of Meryon’s well-known series of etchings "Eaux-fortes sur Paris,” made between 1850 and 1854, a series which can scarcely be surpassed. They are not so much “views” of Paris as the compositions of an artist

coupled with the visions of a poet. It was an epic of Paris that Meryon was determined to make, coloured strongly by his personal sentiment and affected here and there by things of the moment in more than one case, for instance, Meryon hurried to etch his impression of some old-world building about to be demolished.

Meryon’s excellent draughtsmanship and his keen appreciation of light and shade and tone were helps to becoming a great etcher. He was at home with every style of architecture, and with the depiction of river water and the grey and lowering skies as often hang over northern European cities. In 1857, the Duke of Aremberg commissioned Meryon to etch views of his estate at Enghien, in Belgium. Already, however, Metyon was troubled by the insanity that was finally to wreck his life. Under poverty and disappointment, he become subject to

hallucinations, and imagined that enemies were waiting for him on street comers. In 1858, he was committed to an asylum at Charenton.

Some 15 months later he was released. The work of his later period is not, in general as fine as that in the earlier years, much of its being affected by his mental state. In 1866, he was returned to the asylum, where he died in February, 1868— after having in despair damaged many of his plates.