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…
News
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…
Constance Weyergang: Artist, Musician, Poet
By Michele Leggott Summer 1950. Constance Weyergang, 74, is looking at the black sand and sparkling waters of Ngamotu Beach in New Plymouth. The beach is adjacent to the port that serves Taranaki and both are sheltered by a breakwater. Among the swimmers and sunbathers Constance watches could be my young parents, engaged but not Read More…
Edwin’s Books: The Briant Connection
By Michele Leggott It is 1961. Brothers Philip Winning and Hugh Godfrey Briant look over family papers and books passed down from their late mother Gretchen Briant née Weyergang and decide to gift a letter and a dictionary to the Taranaki Museum. The brothers farm at Bonny Glen, Marton and have been talking to their Read More…
Groundwork: Emily Cumming Harris, Artist and Writer
By Michele Leggott With many research materials uploaded to the website 2019-21, our thoughts are turning to plans for a book about Emily Harris and her world that might utilise some of these online resources. I would like to write a book about Emily that introduces her work to a general audience, rather as she Read More…