By Russell Briant And this is my picture. Or how we got our own Emily Harris, ‘Kiekie, Tī Ngahere, Kōwharawhara, Libertia and Nīkau’ (1906) My name is Russell Briant and Emily Cumming Harris is my 3x great aunt. Those of you who have read this wonderful blog may know that the Briant connection with the Read More…
News
Antarctic panels revealed
By Catherine Field-Dodgson and Michele Leggott Last month Michele reflected on Emily Harris’s missing 1906 sub-antarctic panel and wondered what it might look like: We can make some guesses about the size and content of Emily’s second panel of Antarctic flowers, to date unlocated. Given her predilection for symmetry we can guess the second panel Read More…
Antarctic Flowers 1906 at Puke Ariki
By Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson, with research support from Runa Bhakta and Libby Baker Four tall spikes of ligusticum reach from the bottom of a rectangular panel towards the top of Emily Harris’s painting. The two largest have flower heads that resemble a carrot in flower, but with pink rather than white umbels and Read More…
Three celmisias and a white gentian: Emily Harris at the British Museum
By Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson The reporter from the Nelson Evening Mail is more than usually enthusiastic about the work on show at Emily Harris’s studio in Nile St East. Under the heading ‘Some Exquisite Paintings’ the range and ambition of Emily’s latest project is described in detail: Miss Harris has undoubted talent in Read More…
Thomas Kirk at Te Papa: the Campbell Island flora
By Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson 14 January 1890 The Colonial Government Steamship Hinemoa reaches Campbell Island with botanists Thomas Kirk and Frederick Chapman on board. The steamer has visited the Snares and the Auckland Islands, travelling ever further south into the brief sub-antarctic summer since leaving Bluff 8 January on her periodic tour of Read More…
Emily at the Nelson Philosophical Society
By Catherine Field-Dodgson Nestled amongst the collection of Emily Harris watercolours at the Turnbull Library in Wellington is a large painting of a weird plant with huge green leaves. Bearing more than a passing resemblance to an overgrown cabbage, or something out of The Day of the Triffids, it’s certainly not a commonly-seen plant in Read More…
Talking to the scientific gentlemen
By Michele Leggott Everyone in Nelson knows that Miss Harris of Nile St is on the lookout for interesting plants to paint. Friends bring or send floral offerings and she records the gifts in her diary: Survey Camp, Rainbow River April 8th 1886. Dear Miss Harris, As Mr Ward, my assistant, is going down to Read More…
James Dall’s yellow rātā
By Catherine Field-Dodgson Many of Emily Cumming Harris’s artworks have disappeared over the past hundred years, but some paintings that we would love to see reappear are her studies of yellow rātā. Thanks to her diary and several newspaper articles, we know that Emily painted more than one version of the climbing yellow rātā vine Read More…
In the Beginning: Dunedin 1869
By Michele Leggott There is pomp and ceremony, and there is a lot of art. Almost 1150 works hang in the Post Office building in Dunedin, which has been repurposed by an energetic committee of gentlemen as the location of the first Fine Arts exhibition in New Zealand. Honourable Secretary William Hodgkins delivers the committee’s Read More…
Looking for the 1906 paintings
By Catherine Field-Dodgson Recently we have been looking into the twelve large flower studies in oil that Emily Harris painted for the 1906-07 New Zealand International Exhibition in Christchurch. The Christchurch International Exhibition was an expansive display of nationalism: a way to promote tourism, products and a sense of colonial New Zealand identity to the Read More…