Wellington Harbour, N.Z.

Charles Heaphy was only nineteen when he was appointed as artist to the New Zealand Company’s expedition that sailed from England in May 1839 to select and purchase from Maori owners land in New Zealand suitable for British settlement. The company’s schemes required a steady flow of migrants with the capital and enterprise needed to develop its vision of a ‘New Britain’, and a sophisticated marketing strategy was used to attract them. Attractive images of the New Zealand landscape and the company’s new settlements were vital ingredients in the campaign to encourage appropriate settlers and land purchasers.

Despite his youth, Heaphy was well suited for the role of company artist. His father, Thomas Heaphy, was a prominent watercolorist; Charles himself had attended lectures at the Royal Academy in London and had worked as a draughtsman for a railway construction firm. He had the accurate topographical eye and the artistic skills needed to produce the persuasive and attractive images the company needed.

The work in Te Papa’s collection is a preliminary study for Heaphy’s well-known watercolour of the same year, View of a part of the town of Wellington, New Zealand, looking towards the south-east, comprising about one-third of the water-frontage… (Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington). The artist’s viewpoint is from Clay Point, above the junction of Lambton Quay and Willis Street. The shoreline and much of the harbour that he depicts have long been buried by reclamations, although contemporary viewers will recognise the lines of Lambton Quay and Wakefield Street. By the time Heaphy completed View of a part of the town of Wellington- in September 1841, the settlement was suffering from inadequate capital investment and poor access to farming land. But both Wellington Harbour, New Zealand and his finished work depict a pretty little settlement, with a busy harbour, a general air of picturesque prosperity, and surrounding hills that are decidedly less rugged than they are in reality. The only elements that might have seemed alien to viewers in Britain are the beached waka, or canoes, in the foreground.

Michael Fitzgerald

This essay originally appeared in Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2009).