Lake Wakatipu with Mount Earnslaw, Middle Island, New Zealand

Eugène von Guérard made a one-month tour of New Zealand in the summer of 1876. Armed with a pocket sketchbook, he visited Lake Wakatipu and drew the panoramic view for this painting. When the painting was first exhibited in 1877, a reviewer enthused: ‘Lake Wakatipu offers an inexhaustible variety of subjects for the artist, who must feel fairly embarrassed, not merely by the opulence of the themes . . . but also by the constantly varying aspects which any one scene presents.’ Von Guérard admirably addressed this overabundance, allowing the mountain forms to provide the structural backdrop to his flourishes of local detail and mastery of light and atmosphere.

Known and even criticised for his ‘microscopism’, von Guérard defended his tendency to paint intricate detail, stating he ‘consciously strove to portray nature in all its detail, as he would never set himself up as a judge of what in nature should not be painted’. Lake Wakatipu is less true to nature than previously thought. The central waka is oriented backwards, with the sternpost at the bow.

Von Guérard’s sketch for the canoe is titled ‘Sketch in Port Nicholson’, however a recent discovery reveals it was not drawn from life; rather it was copied – title, mistake and all – from a lithograph by George French Angas. The foreground rocky outcrop was another invention, which allowed von Guérard to paint the native bush that so captivated him. While his rendering of the forms is remarkable, his depiction of flora is not entirely accurate.

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