Notes and Comments

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 15, Issue 2, 1 October 1982, Page 110

Notes and Comments

Frank Sargeson memorial exhibition

From 14 April until the end of May the Library mounted a small exhibition as its tribute to the late Frank Sargeson (1903-82) who died in Auckland on 2 March. The exhibition drew on manuscripts, typescripts and ephemera from the Sargeson Papers (MS 432), from the Sir Joseph Heenan Papers (MS 1132), on copies of books and serials from the general collections, on photographs, drawings, paintings and sculpture, and a map to locate Sargeson in his setting at 14 Esmonde Road, Takapuna. The Endowment Trust purchased the bulk of Sargeson’s literary and personal papers in 1971 for the Library and negotiations are near conclusion for the purchase of the residue. The exhibition was opened formally at a small function in the Library on 20 April at which Christine Cole Catley, Sargeson’s literary executor, spoke on his personal and literary achievements. To mark the occasion, the Endowment Trust has issued a limited edition of one of Frank Sargeson’s earliest sketches, ‘Conversation With My Uncle’, first published in Tomorrow, 24 July 1935. The edition, limited to 200 copies, was printed by Alan Loney on his Albion press on damped Whatman handmade paper. Copies are available to the public at $5.00 and to the Friends at $4.00 (postage 50c extra).

Turnbull 1981 Winter Lectures The 1981 Winter Lectures, first published in the Record in May 1982, are now available as a separate pamphlet of 46 pages for $3.00 ($4.00 to the public). Copies are on sale at the Library or can be ordered by post from the Secretary of the Friends, P.O. Box 12349, Wellington. Postage is an extra 30c.

Turnbull Library Prints 1982 The Turnbull Library Endowment Trust will publish two sets of reproductions of original works of art in the Library’s collections in its 1982 series. Following the precedent of the past two years one set will be published on behalf of the Research Endowment Fund and profits from this set will be made available for the objects of the Research Fund. The first set consists of four watercolours by John Gully (1819-1888) drawn from the von Haast collection purchased by the Endowment Trust from the Royal Geographical Society in 1973. The first set of prints made from this collection, published in 1974, is now sold out. The three loose prints are ‘The West Coast of the Province of Canterbury from the Northern

Bank of the River Grey’ (1862); ‘Two Waterfall Glacier, Valley of the River Macaulay, 4,oßoft’ (1862); and ‘Lake Pukaki’ (1862). The folder illustration is ‘Macaulay Glaciers’ (1862). All the paintings are very early examples of Gully’s work and were specially commissioned by Sir Julius von Haast as illustrations for a lecture, ‘Notes on the Mountains and Glaciers of the Canterbury Province, New Zealand’, delivered to the Royal Geographical Society in London in 1864. The second set comprises four watercolours by J. B. C. Hoyte (1833-1913); ‘Auckland Harbour’ (1869) on the folder; and ‘Auckland Harbour, New Zealand. House built by Harry Cobley about 1867’ (ca. 1870); ‘Harry Cobley’s House’ (ca. 1870), and ‘Gold Mining near Kopu, Coromandel’, (ca. 1868) as loose prints. The Hoytes are a charming evocation of Colonial Auckland and should help dispel the opinion, widely held in Auckland, that the Turnbull Library is only a Wellington institution. Prices for both are $24 the set, $8 per print, with a 25% discount to members of the Friends of the Turnbull Library.

New Zealand’s first resident botanical artist?

The publication in 1975 of Donald H. Simpson’s Manuscript Catalogue of the Library of the Royal Commonwealth Society drew our attention to some very interesting items in the Society’s collections. The acquisitive nerve was stimulated by one entry: TIFFEN, Henry Stokes and HOOKER, Sir William Jackson. Native plants of New Zealand. Album, 15” X 22" of cartridge paper interlined with brown paper, bound in half leather with MS lists inserted. ‘New Zealand Company: Native Plants of New Zealand’ is on a leather label on the front cover. . . . consists of 46 original watercolours, 40 specimens of shrubs and plants, 37 specimens of ferns and 33 pages of unidentified specimens. The collection was made by the surveyor H. S. Tiffen and the identification by Sir William Hooker, but the artist is not stated. . . . Presented by Sir Frederick Young.

The evidence, such as it was, suggested that the volume dated from the 1840 s. Henry Stokes Tiffen (1819-1896) was a surveyor employed by the New Zealand Company who arrived in New Zealand on the Brougham early in 1842 and in 1844 took up a cattle run in the Wairarapa. Sir Frederick Young (1817-1913), the former owner of the volume, was the younger brother of William Carling Young who arrived in Nelson in the Mary Ann in 1842 and was drowned in the Wairoa River on 14 August 1842, and a son of George Frederick Young, M.P. for Tynemouth, a director of the New Zealand Company. But did the paintings date from the period 1842-44 when Tiffen was in the employ of the New Zealand Company? And who was the artist? Were these hitherto unknown works by one of our established artists, or was there an unknown botanical artist working in New Zealand in the 1840 s? Or were the paintings done later at Kew, from the specimens, by one of Hooker’s artists? The Library of the Royal Commonwealth Society kindly supplied us with photographs of the 46 original watercolours and after

some detective work we were able to identify the artist from a comparison of the photographs with the five botanical paintings by ‘Miss King’ included in Edward Jerningham Wakefield’s Illustrations to “Adventure in New Zealand’’, issued in London in 1845. The Royal Commonwealth Society’s volume contained the largest known collection of examples of the work of Martha King, and the evidence was reasonably conclusive that the works were completed before 1845, which seems to establish Martha King as New Zealand’s first resident botanical artist. (William Swainson, an obvious rival, arrived in Wellington six months later on 24 May 1841.) Martha King’s only other

known work consists of a small group of pencil sketches of Wellington, Wanganui and New Zealand held in the Turnbull. Martha King (1807-1897) arrived in Wellington on board the Bolton in December 1840 with her elder sister Maria, her brother Samuel Popham King, and her sister-in-law Mary Jane. They were among the foundation settlers of Wanganui, arriving there on board the Elizabeth on 27 February 1841. Samuel King was made a Justice of the Peace and was Wanganui’s second postmaster. Maria King opened a school in Wanganui, and both sisters taught there. In 1847 the family moved to New Plymouth, where all three ladies opened a school. Martha King was apparently a special friend of Mrs Emma Wicksteed, and both women provided illustrations for the volume of lithographic plates, published in 1845, to accompany E. J. Wakefield’s Adventure in New Zealand. Of the five botanical illustrations in this work, four are represented in the Royal Commonwealth Society’s volume. Martha King was known to have exhibited a botanical painting at the Sydney Exhibition of 1879.

This story has a happy ending. The Library’s appeal to the Library of the Royal Commonwealth Society to purchase the album, initially rebuffed, was successful in 1981 and early in 1982 the Endowment Trust purchased the volume for the Library at a valuation suggested by John Maggs of Maggs Brothers. The 46 original watercolours are as fresh as the day they were painted and are a significant addition to the Library’s collections of natural history paintings. It is hoped that in the near future they can be made available to a wider audience by publication in a print or card series.

Early Imprints Project workers awarded scholarships Of all the graduates who have worked at the Turnbull over the last three years on the Early Imprints Project, the two longest-serving, John Hetet and Phil Lewin, are both taking up scholarships this year for further study in England. Both began as vacation workers and were subsequently employed under contract to the National Library. Their academic training and abilities have been of considerable value to the success of the project. John Hetet (who also has a B.Sc. degree from the University of Auckland) completed a first class honours degree in English at the Victoria University of Wellington in 1979 and his thesis for M. A. in 1982. He will study at Cambridge (Darwin College) for his doctorate in historical bibliography under Philip Gaskell, on the Ngarimu 28th Maori Battalion Postgraduate Scholarship, the Winiata Scholarship, a Cambridge Bursary and an Overseas Research Students Grant, the latter two being British awards. Phil Lewin also has a first class honours degree in English from Victoria and is presently working on his M.A. thesis. He will take up a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford (Balliol College) to study for an M.Phil. on Romantic literature under Jonathan Wordsworth. Both have represented Victoria University at sport —John at tennis, Phil at rugby —and both have studied under Professor D. F. McKenzie, a prime

mover in the Early Imprints Project (E.1.P.). This project aims to record (ultimately in machine-readable form) all items printed before 1801 in Australian and New Zealand libraries. The Turnbull is acting as the centre for holding and editing all New Zealand records, and it is anticipated that a short-title catalogue of the holdings in the Wellington region will be published in 1983.

Award for Art Room Assistant At the Contemporary Art Exhibition for the 1.8. M. Art Award held at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in May 1982, Fergus Collinson, part-time assistant in the Art Room of the Turnbull Library, won joint first prize together with the Wellington artist Joan Fanning. The awards are worth $750 each, and the winning paintings were selected from 270 entries. Fergus, a self-taught artist who devotes his spare time to painting, and has recently been elected an artist member of the Academy, submitted three acrylics entitled ‘Betty Garrett in the North Island’, ‘Rata Cabin, Gem Resort’ and ‘lt’s the Charleston’. His strikingly fresh and colourful paintings can be seen adorning the walls of several sections of the Library.

Another Book from Hawk Press On 7July a special edition ofj. C. Beaglehole’s essay, ‘The New Zealand Scholar’, was launched at a function in the Library organised by the publisher, Hawk Press. The book is published in a hand-printed edition of 100 copies only, at a price of S2OO per copy. The guest speaker, Professor Roderick Cave, in an assessment of contemporary fine printing, commented that ‘There is also an upper level of letterpress printing towards which a small number of private press owners have striven —a level at which the aim is to produce work of the same excellence, and using the same best materials and methods as those of Kelmscott, Doves or Ashendene. . . . It is to this small group that Alan Loney now belongs: the Hawk Press is the first and only New Zealand press at this level.’ Copies are still available direct from the Hawk Press, PO Box 41-026, Eastbourne.