Mount Egmont and Pouakai, from New Plymouth

<em>After a long spell of stormy weather we have a south easterly wind, the mountain cuttingly clear, dazzlingly white, with sometimes a delicate and smooth veil of cloud capping his cone …</em>

Henry Richmond, 30 June 1851

While his brother, Henry, was moved to poetic descriptions by the splendour of ‘the mountain’, James Richmond expressed himself in paint.

James felt that previous drawings of Mount Taranaki were ‘very wide of the mark’. In this watercolour, he carefully delineates the contours of the snow-capped peak and surrounding ranges.