By Michele Leggott Thanks to the person who put three framed Emily Harris prints on TradeMe recently, we now have a set of Emily’s beautiful botanical paintings issued by the Turnbull Library in 1968. Our set is 2183 of an edition of 2500. The prints are in good condition and show Emily’s rendition of rangiora Read More…
Tag: botanical art
The Narrowest of Escapes: Emily Harris’s legerdemain
By Jackie Cook What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour? Jane Austen, Letter to J. Read More…
Emily Harris at Te Papa Press 2025
By Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson We are pleased to confirm that Te Papa Press of Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington will publish our Emily Harris book in 2025. Full-colour reproduction of Emily’s paintings and drawings will accompany a text that traces her art and writing across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our project restores the Read More…
Hector’s tree daisy: another Emily Harris oil
By Annabel Galpin In 2006 my mother Janet Briant was downsizing and moving to a retirement village in Whanganui. Before moving she went through the process of dividing many of her possessions between my sisters and me. Among these were several unframed artworks including two of Emily’s oils on strawboard, much in need of conservation. 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concern for fine botanical detail as well as pleasing composition: The pen, ink and watercolour originals for the unpublished New Zealand Mountain Flora (PLATES 33 and 34) are superb examples of botanical illustration.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…
Mrs Hardcastle was a splendid show woman
By Michele Leggott The Wanganui Chronicle reviewer offers a detailed critique of the still life and flower paintings of Mrs Hardcastle, wife of the town’s recently appointed resident magistrate: (72) is a full sized brace of French partridges, hung against the deal lined wall of a larder. If the frame of the picture had been Read More…
A new Emily Harris painting at Puke Ariki
Kathryn Mercer is remembering how she and colleague Mike Gooch spotted an Emily Harris watercolour among the items in the New Plymouth hospice auction earlier this year. It was an exciting moment, and within hours pictorial collections curator Chanelle Carrick was on her way to check out the painting and to ascertain whether or not Read More…
Adelaide report
Lee Hayes is looking thoughtfully at the three single bound copies of Emily Harris’s New Zealand Flowers, Berries and Ferns in the Barr Smith Library at the University of Adelaide. We can see that the dark blue leather of the original binding has been cut out and stuck on to cloth-bound boards that don’t quite Read More…
Kākābeak: Spring update
Michele and I are heading to Australia soon to check out hand-coloured sets of Emily Harris’s New Zealand Flowers, Berries and Ferns. In Sydney we’ll visit the Mitchell Library / State Library of New South Wales. Then we’ll continue on to Adelaide, where the University also has a complete, hand-coloured set of Flowers, Berries and Read More…
Mountain Flora: The Rendel Connection
We know where Emily Harris’s New Zealand Mountain Flora is now. It was an artist’s mock-up of the book she planned to publish, couldn’t afford and then sold to her English cousin Lord Stuart Rendel for his private collection. By way of the estate of collector Kenneth Webster, the Alexander Turnbull Library was able to Read More…