Terrace scenes in bank

Press, 21 February 1986, Page 18

Terrace scenes in bank

By

TED REYNOLDS

of the N.Z. “Herald”

The explosions quite startled Mr and Mrs Blomfield. They lived in Wood Street, Freemans Bay, Auckland, and on the night of June 10, 1886, they could hear a fearful rumbling and banging going on outside. Inside, Mrs Blomfield was giving birth to a baby. All over Auckland people guessed that the explosions must be a warship aground on the Manukau Bar firing guns as a distress signal, but a reporter who went out to the coast, could find no ship in trouble. New Plymouth people thought the sound was like "explosions or the firing of man-o-war guns at sea.” Wanganui police thought some ship must be in distress and went out to search the coast. Way down south in Blenheim people heard the noise, Dunedin reported lightning. Over Taupo an unbroken stream of red-hot rocks covered the sky. The noise in Tauranga caused such a panic that people begged for a steamer to come and rescue them. Next morning at nine o’clock the -sky was so full of smoke that the town was in total darkness and covered with ashes.

At 8.52 a.m. in Rotorua a very cool man called H. Dunbar Johnston, thinking it desirable to prevent the spread of unduly exaggerated reports, sent out a note reporting “the true state of the case.”

“We are in the midst,” he wrote, “of a terrible convulsion of nature. The extinct volcano cones of Tarawera and Rutahia burst into activity between one and two o’clock this morning. “There was a constant succession of earthquakes until five

o’clock and the thunder and lightning became almost incessant, and still continues. “Immense volumes of flame and smoke issue from the cones, and steam from the locality of the White Terrace ... it is an awfully grand sight, and resembles Martin’s picture of The Last Judgment. “The people are greatly excited; many have cleared out.” Days later, Charles Blomfield, whose new son had been bom .to the sound of far explosions, thought that the arrival of the infant combined with nature’s florid display might give him an excuse for not replying immediately to a letter he had received front, Christchurch. Then on June 28 he got round to writing his answer. He apologised for the delay by saying he had been “detained by the illness of my wife, who gave birth to a son just as the reports and thundeiings and explosions were sounding in our ears.” Charles Blomfield was an industrious painter who covered bolts Of canvas with scenes of popular tourist places. And the man he was writing to was Thomas de Renzy Condell who was worried that Blomfield might have been among the people killed when Mt Tarawera blew its top. Condell was a master at Christ’s College who had met Blomfield in the summer of 1884-85 when Condell was leading a party of boarders on a visit to the hot lakes, the geysers, the Pink Terraces and the White Terraces. Paintings of the terraces were

one of Blomfieid’s productionruns.' 1 -/ . Condell, though, did not want one of Blomfieid’s standard views. He knew exactly what he wanted. He showed Blomfield what he was to paint and they fixed on a price: £l5 for two scenes. It was, as they say, a lot of money for those days. For the same amount he could have bought 30 pairs of ladies’ elasticsided boots. , ; ' Back .home in Christchurch Condell’s expedition to the hot lakes was for years a great topic of household conversation. There were the two Blomfield paintings on the wall for visitors to be shown. (They had been framed by Fisher, the little Jewish frame-maker in Colombo Street, who always wore his skullcap in the shop.) And if the company was judged suitable, Thomas Condell could tell the story of the Christ’s College boys and the naked woman.

Condell and his pupils had hired a Maori guide to find them a good bathing pool on the Pink Terraces. She had led the way, putting a toe in each pool as they passed until she found one that was the right temperature. Then she took off her cloak, and she took off her skirt, and in front of Condell and the boys she walked, naked into the water. - : .

She must have teased the boys for not following her into the water because they took their eyes off her long enough to turn to Condell with an expression on their faces that asked: “Are we allowed to, sir?”

Sir nodded. They all jumped out of their clothes and into the water. So when news of the Tarawera eruption reached Christchurch Condell wrote to Blomfield asking if he was safe. Newspaperreports had mentioned a Blom-, field being in the area at the — time. Condell feared that the man who did the pictures may have been trapped in the hot mud that poured all over the district; could have been struck ■" by rocks; could have fallen down one of the chasms that opened in the ground or could have been scalded by the geysers that suddenly sprouted for miles around. Charles Blomfield was able to assure Condell that he himself was safe at home. The Blomfield mentioned by the newspapers was a nephew employed by the “New Zealand Herald.” Still, wrote Blomfield, “I feel deep grief at the loss of the lovely terraces. I spent so long down there and knew every nook and cranny so well that I seemed to have lost a permanent friend when the news came that they were destroyed ... It is a most melancholy fact that the most beautiful spots have been destroyed. The terraces are blown to atoms.” Years passed. Condell died in 1923. Christ’s College named a house after him and Christchurch an avenue. In the modern 1950 s descendants became embarrassed by the ornate frames on the Blomfield pictures .— they were quite out of fashion — and took them back to Colombo Street to get something more up-to-date. Little Mr Fisher was still in his shop and still in a skullcap and when he saw the pictures he said: “I remember Mr Condell getting them framed.” More Condell descendants died. The pictures were bequeathed again and this time they came to Auckland with Blomfieid’s letter to Condell. The Auckland city art gallery recommended a cleaner to remove years of pipe smoke and household dust. The pictures now look as Blomfield must have seen them.

But, now nobody sees them any more. Speculators and profiteers are doing such strange things to the price of pictures that the owners no longer dare hang them on the wall. By any standards Blomfield was no more than a competent artisan-painter. His photographs of the Pink Terraces and the White Terraces meant he could reproduce popular scenes long after they had been destroyed. Today, though, the greed of art-gamblers has turned Blomfield into big money. Last year one sale was reported at $65,000. So the Aucklanders who inherited the pictures dare not have their names mentioned in case they are pestered by dealers or thieves. They do not even dare to look on the paintings. The two canvases in their 1950 s frames now lie in perpetual darkness inside a bank vault.