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This extract originally appeared in Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2024).
This extract was authored by Rebecca Rice.
Henry Freer Rawson, a dentist by trade, arrived in New Zealand with his family in 1856 and settled in New Plymouth. He became a sergeant in the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers and took part in the battle of Waireka on 28 March 1860. He was better suited to creativity than conflict, relocating to Wellington in 1862 and later travelling throughout New Zealand, painting views that were praised for their atmospheric effects.
In this painting he accurately depicts the details of the Ōmata stockade, including the signal mast, which carried canvas-covered wicker balls that, along with flags and pennants, could be arranged to send signals.1 He has pictured the stockade within the broader context that conveys the beauty of the Taranaki landscape, but this is a beauty conceived in terms of bush-felled cultivation, and while Taranaki Maunga rises majestically in the background, the stockade – a structure that signals conflict, danger, the potential of war and violence – is highly conspicuous.
1 Major Cyprian Bridge, ‘Diary’, 10 May 1845.