Overview
Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
The focus in this area of the collection is prints made after drawings and watercolours that record the eighteenth and early nineteenth century voyages of exploration in the Pacific and those that record first settlement in New Zealand.
These include prints after paintings by artists such as Sidney Parkinson, Louis de Sainson, George French Angas, and Charles Decimus Barraud, and appear as both individual prints and in bound volumes. Highlights include a selection of the botanical prints of Banks’ Florilegium, early imprints of the Cook folios and D’Urville folios, and lithographs by Edith Halcombe.
Twentieth century
The New Zealand print collection contains examples of artists’ prints whose work is also represented in other media - for example, woodcuts by Philip Clairmont, screen prints by Gordon Walters, etchings by Robyn Kahukiwa, and lithographs by Tony Fomison.
There are also collections of work by artists whose work is primarily graphic. These include a large collection of etchings by A H McLintock and E Heber Thompson, wood engravings by Mabel Annesley and E Mervyn Taylor, and linocuts by Eileen Mayo and Stewart Maclennan.
The work of contemporary printmakers such as John Drawbridge, Gordon Crook, Robin White, Kate Coolahan, Barry Cleavin, Max Hailstone, and Paul Hartigan are strongly represented.