By Dasha Zapisetskaya Then as we neared our camping ground the branches of the trees were draped with greenish grey moss, which gave the forest a most weird appearance, as if the whole place had been dipped into the depths of the sea & had come up covered with seaweed. (Drawing Lines, 21 Jan 1890) Read More…
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Three Paintings from 1906
By Michele Leggott Among the artists and photographers listed in the Nelson, Marlborough and Westland volume of the Cyclopedia of New Zealand (1906) is an entry for Emily Harris: Harris, Miss Emily Cumming, Artist, Nile Street, Nelson. Miss Harris was born at Plymouth, England, and is a daughter of the late Mr. Edwin Harris, one Read More…
Speaking Back to Emily Harris
By Michele Leggott We’ve noticed from the outset of our research into Emily Harris’s art and writing that responding creatively is a powerful tool for reflecting on the differences between Emily’s world and our own. There is the archival collage ‘Emily and Her Sisters,’ composed in the slipstream of discovering family artwork and papers at Read More…
All Emily’s poems
By Michele Leggott There are just ten surviving poems by Emily Harris, two from 1860 and eight from the 1890s or early 1900s. They are the visible tip of a writing practice that persisted from the time Emily was a young woman in Taranaki, teaching in her mother’s school before the war, to her later Read More…
‘Dark Emily’ and the Shadows of James Upfill Wilson
‘Dark Emily’ is a new poem from Michele Leggott, recently published in Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2021 (which can be purchased at Massey University Press and other book retailers), and is available in text and as an audio performance by Michele on our website. For this blog post, I’d love to share a few of the traces of Read More…
Emily Harris and Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull
By Michele Leggott The Turnbull Library in Wellington holds a letter from Emily Harris to Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull (1868-1918), the collector and bibliophile whose name and collections were given to the library when it was established in 1919. Emily’s letter in the file of inward correspondence is accompanied by a clipping of her obituary in Read More…
The Alexander Turnbull Prints
TradeMe, as we have discovered before, occasionally unearths items related to Emily Harris much to our delight. Back in September last year, Catherine Field-Dodgson wrote ‘Treasure Hunting on TradeMe’ upon finding copies of Emily’s New Zealand Berries, Ferns, and Flowers. Later that year, I found a set of Alexander Turnbull Library prints of three of Read More…
NZ Mountain Flora goes live!
By Michele Leggott Botanical historian F Bruce Sampson thought Emily Harris’s illustrations of New Zealand mountain flora showed the artist’s concern for fine botanical detail as well as pleasing composition: The pen, ink and watercolour originals for the unpublished New Zealand Mountain Flora (PLATES 33 and 34) are superb examples of botanical illustration. They are Read More…
The Bear in the Bishopdale Sketching Club
On August 17th in 1890, Emily Harris wrote in her diary about ‘the bear’: A few months ago two Frenchmen came to Nelson with a dancing bear. A splendid animal not two years old, quite an infant its master said, although it was much taller than the man when it stood upon its hind legs. Read More…
A descendant of James Cobham Harris
By Michele Leggott Professor R. Middleton (University of Bristol) is a direct descendant of Edwin Harris’s older brother James Cobham Harris (1794-1876) [JCH]. Professor Middleton got in touch earlier this year to explain the connection and to forward a selection of images that depict portraits of the Harris family in his possession. We knew already Read More…