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…
Tag: botanical art
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concern for fine botanical detail as well as pleasing composition: The pen, ink and watercolour originals for the unpublished New Zealand Mountain Flora (PLATES 33 and 34) are superb examples of botanical illustration.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…
Emily at the Natural History Museum, London
As the onset of war in 1914 closed sea lanes to Europe and turned international scientific delegates for home sooner than planned, Emily Harris wrote to the Keeper of Botany at the Natural History Museum in London: I have been looking forward for months for the visit of the Scientific visitors to New Zealand & Read More…
Domett in the Bush
Alfred Domett has the last word on the English climate: ‘O horrible, horrible, most horrible.’ For the last month or six weeks dullness-cloud and fog – perpetual Scotch mist or rain – spitting not pouring. ‘Adam loved God – but went apart and dwelt in the shade’ – So Jeremy Taylor began one of his Read More…
Open Call for Emily’s New Zealand Flowers, New Zealand Berries, and New Zealand Ferns
How far did Emily Harris’s books of botanical lithographs travel? How many copies did she sign and hand-colour? These and other questions have come to the fore as we search overseas catalogues and collate the results, finding a surprising number of hand-coloured sets outside New Zealand. New Zealand Flowers, New Zealand Berries, and New Zealand Read More…