The native flowers of New Zealand

Georgina Burne Hetley (née McKellar) was a self-taught botanical artist. She was born in Battersea, England on 27 May 1832. When she was about 10 years old, her family moved to Madeira, Portugal, and in 1852 they migrated to New Zealand, after the death of her father. Her mother, Annette McKellar, bought a block of land at Ōmatā, near New Plymouth, which they called Fernlea.

On 2 June 1856, Georgina married fellow Ōmatā settler Charles Hetley and together they moved to their farm Brookwood. However, Charles passed away tragically just before their first wedding anniversary, leaving Georgina with their new-born son, Charles Frederick. She moved back to her mother’s farm shortly afterwards. Due to increasing hostilities in Taranaki in 1860, the family left Fernlea (which was later burnt down) and shifted to New Plymouth instead.

During her time in Taranaki, Georgina Hetley started drawing and producing watercolours of her surroundings, developing a particular interest in the landscapes and flora of New Zealand. After moving to Auckland with her son in 1879, she began exhibiting her works with the Auckland Society of Artists and also joined the New Zealand Art Students’ Association. Her skill and passion for depicting native flowers was recognised when she won several prizes for her art in 1884 and 1885.

It was also during these years that she began her most well-known work, The native flowers of New Zealand (1888). In the Preface, she explains that her interest in botanical painting was strengthened whenever she saw dried and browned specimens of New Zealand flowers and thought to herself: "What a pity they are not painted." This is what she sat out to do in the book, further inspired by a lecture on a botanical trip to Nelson given by curator Thomas Cheeseman at Auckland Museum in 1881.

With Cheeseman’s encouragement and financial support from the government, Hetley embarked on writing and illustrating this comprehensive guide to New Zealand flora. She travelled throughout the country collecting and drawing plants, which she believed were highly endangered and thus needed to be recorded for the future: "the beautiful forest with its flowers and ferns is fast disappearing before the tide of cultivation, and many will only be known by their dried and shrivelled up remains."

In 1886 Hetley left for England to oversee the publication of her work, which was first published in three parts in 1887-1888 and then as a single volume in 1888. In it, she describes 45 species of flowers, including the now extinct mistletoe Loranthus adamsii (plate 12). These texts are accompanied by 36 stunning colour plates, which were also published in a French edition the following year.

During her time in England, she was also invited by Sir Joseph D. Hooker (1817-1911) - on Cheeseman's recommendation - to work at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, "writing descriptions, doing dissections and obtaining information from numerous books".

Hetley spent the rest of her life in Auckland, where she passed away after a long illness, on 29 August 1898. In 2017, she was selected as one of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's 150 Women in 150 Words, which celebrated the contributions of women to knowledge in New Zealand.

References:

June Starke. 'Hetley, Georgina Burne', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1993. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2h31/hetley-georgina-burne

Royal Society Te Apārangi. 'Georgina Hetley', 150 Women in 150 Words, 2017, https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/150th-anniversary/150-women-in-150-words/1867-1917/georgina-hetley/

See also:

Catherine Field-Dodgson, ‘In Full Bloom: Botanical Art and Flower Painting by Women in 1880s New Zealand’, 2003, http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/handle/10063/4681