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Overview
Nancy Adams was one of New Zealand’s most prolific botanists and a talented artist. She produced a vast number of botanical illustrations, which were included in widely distributed and well-regarded books about New Zealand flora. Her work, celebrated for its beauty and accuracy, includes Mountain Flowers of New Zealand (A.H & A.W. Reed, 1965), Wild Flowers in New Zealand (A.H & A.W. Reed, 1980), and the award-winning Seaweeds of New Zealand: An Illustrated Guide (Canterbury University Press, 1994).
Although Adams is most closely associated with her botanic drawings and watercolours, she was also a fine artist, exhibiting works for sale at prominent New Zealand galleries during her lifetime, including the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts from 1951 – 1979 and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in 1987. (1, 2) Her works are held in private collections and nationally at the Alexander Turnbull Library and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
This colourful landscape, watercolour and crayon on paper, depicts the coast of the Coromandel, a destination Adams visited frequently throughout her life.
This work was exhibited, but withheld from sale, at Wilderness 5, an exhibition of works by five New Zealand artists drawing inspiration and subject matter from nature. The show opened at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington on 8 June 1979, and toured seven New Zealand cities November 1979 and to July 1980.
1. Kay, Robin and Tony Eden. Portrait of a Century: The History of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts 1882-1982. Wellington: Millwood Press, 1983. P. 199.
2. Kate Hannah. 'Adams, Nancy Mary', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 2019. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/6a3/adams-nancy-mary (accessed 4 March 2025)