Earle and Angas: two important new watercolours

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 11, Issue 1, 1 May 1978, Page 40

Earle and Angas: two important new watercolours

A. A. St. C. M. MURRAY-OLIVER

Augustus Earle is known as the author of two early New Zealand classics, Narrative of a Nine Months’ Residence in New Zealand (1832; re-issued 1909; and again, edited by Dr E. H. McCormick, 1968) and Sketches in New Zealand (1838), a very rare portfolio of which a very few copies are in contemporary hand-colouring. Regrettably all Earle’s first sketches made in New Zealand during his visit to the Bay of Islands in 1827-28 were lost when his hut at Kororareka was burned down. Only 36 New Zealand watercolours and drawings have hitherto been known for many years —and all these, with one oil painting, are held in the large Earle collection in Canberra, part of the Rex Nan Kivell Collection in the National Library of Australia. They have, however, been lent for exhibition in New Zealand on three occasions since 1953, and all known New Zealand pictures by Earle, including prints after works by him, were reproduced in colour in Augustus Earle in New Zealand (1968). The Library was fortunate in that Alexander Turnbull had acquired one of the finest early New Zealand oils, depicting Earle’s meeting with Hongi Hika; an unfortunate travesty of this was lithographed in the Sketches. A second oil, of Te Rangituke with his wife and son, was purchased at auction by the Endowment Trust in 1967. It is of particular importance in that it is the only Earle of a New Zealand subject included in the illustrations to Fitzßoy’s Narrative ... of the . . . ‘Beagle’ (1839), Earle having been Fitzßoy’s artist on the early stages of the voyage. This painting came from the fine collection of Captain A. W. F. Fuller, of London, the source of the Library’s new acquisition, a view across from near Paihia toward the site of Old Russell at Okiato and up the Bay to the Kawakawa River.

Earle, like Sir William Fox and Charles Heaphy (especially in their earlier watercolours), responded superbly to the New Zealand scene and recorded it faithfully without in any way ‘anglicizing’ it as did so many of their successors. Earle’s subtle earthy colours convey the essence of Northland landscapes and this particular painting is among his very best. Although unsigned it bears an inscription in his own hand, and the characteristic phoneticized spelling of Kawakawa as ‘Coower Coower’, wrongly interpreted by Fuller and others as Kerikeri. This watercolour is obviously part of the series now in the Rex Nan Kivell Collection, which came on the

market in London in 1926 from a descendant of the artist’s stepbrother, Admiral Smyth. It is not now possible to determine just when the newly acquired watercolour was separated from the collection.

An expatriate New Zealander living in England, realizing the picture’s unique importance to New Zealand, appropriately offered it to the Library last year, together with another very different watercolour which in its own way is also of considerable significance, being a view of the Rev. Mr Ashwell’s mission station at Pepepe on the Waikato, near Ngaruawahia, in 1844, by George French Angas (1822-86). Like Earle, although both lived in New Zealand for only a few months, Angas is now regarded as one of the more important of our artists of the colonial period. He, too, crossed the Tasman to visit this country for six months in 1844, and he also produced two classics, The New Zealanders Illustrated (1846-47), a famous folio volume (re-issued in facsimile, 1966) and Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand (1847, with three separate reprints in different countries in 1967 and 1969). Most of the numerous Angas watercolours of New Zealand are held in Adelaide, but his preliminary sketch of Pepepe is in the Rex Nan Kivell Collection. The Turnbull’s new watercolour, however, is the original from which the plate on page 37 in vol. 2 of Savage Life and Scenes was engraved; it shows very much more detail than the earlier version. The watercolour lacks the pure simplicity of the Earle but is romantic and charming, of considerable popular appeal as well as being of historical significance.

The two paintings were purchased by the Library for a total of $19,500. Through the good offices of the Hon. Alan Highet the Lottery Board of Control most generously provided a special grant of $19,000, the balance being met by the Endowment Trust. As on previous occasions, without the Lottery Board’s assistance the Library could not have taken advantage of the opportunity to repatriate early New Zealand paintings of great historical significance that were on offer from overseas. The two new paintings are important accessions to the Library’s holdings, already the finest collection of colonial New Zealand art in the world. Alexander Turnbull would be gratified to know that his splendid example has been appreciated and is being emulated sixty years after his death.