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Tomaso Sani; sculptor; 1877; Wellington
Overview
Portrait bust of Dr Isaac Earl Featherston.
Isaac Earl Featherston (1813 - 1876) was elected Superintendent of Wellington Province in 1853, a post he retained until 1870. From 1855 till 1870 he was also Wellington City’s representative in the House of Representatives.
Known for his autocratic ways, he was very much the dominant figure in the politics of the Wellington region.
When the Taranaki War broke out in 1860, Featherston criticised the Government’s handling of events. He used his diplomatic skills and mana to keep much of Wellington Province free of armed conflict.
During the West Coast campaigns of 1865-66 he raised and lead a contingent of pro-Government [kaupapa] Maori, and was later awarded the New Zealand Cross in recognition of his personal bravery. In addition, the town of Featherston and a street in Wellington City were named after him.
Featherston was New Zealand’s Agent-General in London from 1871. These were the peak years of the Vogel immigration and public works schemes, and Featherston oversaw the recruitment and despatch of about 71, 000 migrants to New Zealand.
He died on 21 June 1876. When the news reached Wellington, a “Featherston Memorial Committee” was formed, and decided to commission a marble bust, to be paid for by public subscription.
The commission was awarded to two recently-arrived Italian sculptors, Luigi del Vescovo (1832/33 - ?) and Tommaso Sani (1841/42 - ?). del Vescovo and Sani were among over 300 Italian immigrants who were recruited for New Zealand between 1874 and 1878. They were expected to perform hard manual labour on railway construction projects in the Wairarapa and establish farms among the rainforests of South Westland. Many of these immigrants were actually skilled artisans, having been recruited by an unscrupulous immigration agent, and were quite unsuited to hard manual work.
del Vescovo and Sani were fortunate to find an outlet for their skills so soon after their arrival. The Featherston commission prevented them from cutting their losses and returning to Italy immediately. By mid-September they had completed a much-admired clay maquette of the bust, which they proposed to sculpt from a specially-imported block of Carrara marble.
The completed bust, praised by Featherston’s friends for its realistic depiction of his features, was unveiled at the Colonial Museum on 24? May 1877 and remained on display for many years.
It is unfortunate that del Vescovo and Sani seem to have left Wellington shortly afterwards; presumably, there was simply not enough work offering in the small community for artists of their calibre.