Crossing the Teremakau River

This fine watercolour painting depicts the artist Nicholas Chevalier, his wife Caroline, and their travelling companion and guide Mr Scott on the last stage of their journey from Christchurch to Hokitika in 1866. They are captured in the process of fording one of the tributaries of the Taramakau River (misspelt by Chevalier). The painting is a detailed studio work painted in 1876 when the artist was living in England, from pencil and watercolour sketches made during the journey, and is a good example of the topographical tradition of British watercolour painting with which Chevalier was familiar. He excelled at producing sketches that accurately delineated the features of the terrain and flora of the particular district in which he was travelling.

Romantic overtones
While the figures and the foliage demonstrate Chevalier's assured draughtsmanship and skill as a watercolourist, the colours of the New Zealand bush have been rendered in lighter tones, which give the image a softer, romantic treatment. There are overtones of conventions often used when rendering the Sublime: the size of the trees tends to overwhelm the small figures, but otherwise there are no indications of the privations the party suffered.

Commissioned
Chevalier had been commissioned by the Canterbury Provincial Council to produce drawings and sketches of the Canterbury region. Crossing the Teremakau is only one of a number of watercolours and sketches he made of the journey. Chevalier held an exhibition in the Christchurch Town Hall of some two hundred of his views of Otago and Canterbury in July 1866. The exhibition was well reviewed in the Lyttelton Times and The Press

Seedbed
Chevalier died in 1902, and in 1907 his widow Caroline presented a large selection of the New Zealand watercolours and sketches to the New Zealand Government. When Caroline died in 1919 the remaining collection came to New Zealand. The Chevalier Collection in Te Papa numbers 338 items and provides a splendid pictorial record of Chevalier's travels in both the South and North Islands. The collection provided a seedbed for collecting the work of nineteenth-century New Zealand watercolour artists such as John Gully and C D Barraud, as well as the subsequent collecting of British watercolours that illuminate the traditions in which Chevalier worked.