The week before last Rebecca Rice, Acting Head of Art at Te Papa, officially launched our book Groundwork: The art and writing of Emily Cumming Harris in a wonderful evening that brought Emily’s art and writing into the light again. Rebecca’s speech touched on many of the themes in our book and she has kindly shared it with us:

Rebecca Rice, Acting Head of Art
Launch notes for Groundwork: The art and writing of Emily Cumming Harris, by Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson, Te Papa Press, 2025

After reading Groundwork from cover to cover, devouring the text and images, two phrases from the book kept playing over in my mind. The first comes from a quote from American poet and critic, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, writing on the fragmented state of writing and art by women at the end of the 20th century. She writes:

What impedes her, and who is she. She is the female speck in the history of texts. And she is the scout of its presence

“She is the female speck in the history of texts”

Speck number 1: Over 20 years ago, I met Catherine Field-Dodgson as we were both working towards our masters’ theses in Art History at Victoria University. We occupied a corner office in the Old Kirk building, and as we shared our research, we recognised moments of overlap and connection. I was studying the exhibition of fine art from New Zealand at world fairs, and Catherine was studying the botanical work of women artists through a framework of exhibition and publication – both supervised by Roger Blackley. One day, in Te Papa’s archives, we (Catherine or I, the details have blurred with time) came across a letter from Emily Harris to Hector, first Director of this institution’s predecessor, the Colonial Museum, outlining her intention to send paintings for the Sydney International Exhibition 1879-80. Included in this letter was a delightful diagram suggesting the ideal display of her 28 paintings. I think we were both equally excited by this find – our curiosity was piqued by such a strong expression of artistic intention, and, to top it off, from a woman who was painting flowers. Who was this woman who had such ambition for her work? Was it driven by anxiety or absolute confidence? Were the paintings ultimately displayed in the way she intended? And what was their fate?

Speck number 2: Almost ten years ago, in 2016, I was researching a collection of carte-de-visite portraits relating to the New Zealand wars in the open plan offices of Te Papa. I came across an article by Michele Leggott about soldier-poet Matthew Fitzpatrick who arrived in New Plymouth in 1860 as part of the 65th regiment during the first Taranaki war. In the article, Michele discusses the death of Corbyn Harris, Emily Harris’s brother, and the art of Edwin Harris, their father. While researching Corbyn’s death in the archives of Puke Ariki, she describes being ‘brought up short’ by finding the vivid voice of a 23 year-old Emily in a small booklet – a fascicle – containing copies of her letters and poems. 

Michelle’s curiosity was piqued. What traces might remain of Emily’s poetry and writing? What might these offer by way of a female inscription to the colonial history of the place Michelle knew intimately from her upbringing – the Taranaki region? What might further research add to the story of Emily so far known? Might there be more to Emily than her reputation as a clever diarist and a lady painter of flowers? 

Speck number 3: Five years ago, in 2020 Michelle and Catherine find each other through Emily via a post on Twitter. By this time, ‘Team Emily’ has researched Emily’s family, her work, her letters, diaries and poems. They have found specks in Papers Past, on TradeMe, and in archives, museums and galleries – websites have been made, blogs written, conference papers delivered, and articles published. But when Catherine and Michele join forces, new questions emerge: How ‘professional’ was Emily’s practice? In what ways did her work extend beyond the botanical? How can we account for her evolving style over time? What were her relationships within colonial society, with scientific networks?  How was she perceived by her peers?

Answers to all these questions and more are pieced together in Groundwork. The fragments that remain of Emily’s oeuvre – her art and writing – have been made sense of – her ‘specks in the history of texts’ have been connected, cared for, and woven into an exceptional and compelling narrative. A narrative that is a genre into itself – part biography, part creative non-fiction, part poetry, part family history, part art history, part mystery. An interdisciplinary book is as surprising as Emily herself, it perfectly meets its subject, who anticipated such a publication, writing boldly in 1860:
I am like the active verb to be and to do, I am too necessary an appendage to be left out.

This is the second phrase that stuck with me: ‘I am too necessary an appendage to be left out’

Emily has never been ‘left out’. As Michele and Catherine note, most histories of botanical art feature her work, and she is represented in collections, most notably Puke Ariki, the Turnbull Library and Nelson Provincial Museum. But her inclusion in texts has arguably been light. She has been typecast as a lady painter, financially constrained, not quite as competent or productive as her apparently more successful peers, such as Georgina Hetley and Sarah Featon. Her work has been compared to Chinese painting – delicate, ethereal, slight. 

Groundwork however, digs deeper. The robust research reveals in turn a robustness of character; and a robustness of painting not fully celebrated (or acknowledged) in the written record begins to emerge. Those oil paintings, confidently rendered, challenge the one-dimensionality of Emily’s art as it has been reproduced and circulated in prints and publications to date – the deep red of berries, the ferocious yellow of blooming kōwhai, the deep green of fleshy sub-Antarctic mega herbs surprise and delight. 

So too does the narrative that begins to emerge of Emily’s networks. She is no wilting violet, painting watercolours indoors, but is an active verb, engaged, and most of all, connected. 

Groundwork reveals an Emily who is connected to her broader whakapapa, including branches of the family that wouldn’t normally be given space in a conventional biography. In my field, we talk of the ‘long nineteenth century’. This book makes me wonder what the equivalent is in terms of biography – can we call this a ‘long biography’ that wends its way through generations, across time and space, intertwining and spinning people and relationships in and out of view? This is what we are offered here, all mediated by the role material culture plays in connecting people – taonga tuku iho – treasures handed down in the form of letters, diaries, paintings, photographs, stories, that cross oceans and generations, from Frances to Frances via Emily.

Groundwork reveals an Emily who is connected to the scientific community, both here and abroad: who visits Thomas Kirk in Wellington to paint sub-Antarctic specimens collected on the Hinemoa voyage in 1890, now housed in Te Papa; whose colour renderings of mountain flowers illustrated lantern slide presentations at the Nelson Philosophical Society – providing information not able to be captured by the technology of the time; who, in 1899, and then again in 1910, endeavoured to produce the first illustrated publication of Aotearoa New Zealand’s mountain flora – it would be over 50 years before another woman, Nancy Adams, would achieve this goal, publishing Mountain Flowers of New Zealand in 1966. 

Groundwork reveals an Emily who is connected to the world of art, of literature and painting: to her family, mother, father and siblings who painted, drew and wrote; to that other Emily, Emily Dickinson, who, like this Emily, was writing poetry on the sidelines of civil war, but in Massachusetts; to Tasmanian artist Mary Morton Allport in whose footsteps Emily followed, both as a botanical artist and as painter of comets; to her peers – the Sarah Featons, Georgina Hetleys and Ellis Rowans of the colonial art world; and to those who would continue to challenge the norms, Fanny Richardson and ‘Whispers of Eve’, who would become better known as Robin Hyde. 

In many of her watercolour paintings, Emily delights in creating trompe l’oeil effects whereby painted flowers sneak in and out of her inscribed pencil frames – transgressing the space between artist and viewer. These also have the effect of collapsing time and distance, activating the paintings and bringing them into the present. Michele and Catherine have achieved the same effect with this remarkable book. They have brought Emily Harris, her work, her networks, her whakapapa into the present, into the world of light, in a rich, thoughtful, and thoroughly engaging publication that I am incredibly grateful to have the honour of launching tonight.