A number of paintings and photos of the Harris family have survived in archives and albums across New Zealand and overseas. Below we share what we have found and what has been shared with us.
The Family Album: Harris and Weyergang Album Photographique
The Family Album comes from the collection of Roseanne Cranstone, a descendent of Mary Rendel Weyergang (one of Emily Cumming Harris’s younger sisters). The large format Album Photographique contains studio portraits of Harris family members in New Zealand, Australia, England and Germany. Most prints are cartes de visite, with some cabinet photographs, and many have inscriptions recto or verso. Some have been hand coloured. There are also six pages of CDV reproductions of British and European paintings, some family ephemera, an anonymous printed poem and nine loose inserts. The earliest photographs appear to be from the 1860s, the latest from the 1910s, with at least one photo from the 1920s. There is one photographic reproduction of an 1840s daguerrotype. We have also produced notes on the album here, which include some identifications of individuals and transcriptions of the photo versos.
The Middleton Paintings and Photos
Professor R. Middleton (University of Bristol) is a direct descendant of Edwin Harris’s older brother James Cobham Harris (1794-1876) [JCH], who is working on the family history of the Harris-Middleton-Dobson and associated families. He has shared with us a collection of portraits, both painted and photographed, of the extended Harris families in Plymouth which we reproduce here. Further reading can be found in ‘A descendant of James Cobham Harris’ (1 Apr 2021).
Sisters at a Glance
‘Sisters at a Glance’ is a series of blog posts collating the photos of Emily Cumming Harris and her sisters across various archives and databases including the Alexander Turnbull Library, Nelson Provincial Museum, Puke Ariki Museum, and others. ‘Which Miss Harris’ begins as an introduction to the series and rest are as follows: Emily Cumming Harris, Catherine Harris, Unnamed Daughter, Frances Emma Harris, Mary Rendel Harris, Augusta Harris and Ellen Harris.
A Portrait of Sarah Harris
An oil on canvas portrait of Sarah Harris, Emily Cumming Harris’s mother, has been passed down through her family to Roseanne Cranstone, who shares her recollections of the painting and its history in the blog post linked above.