Overview
Since European voyages of discovery began, the New Zealand landscape has been a favourite subject of European artists and painters and, later, photographers. Painters like the highly regarded water-colourist John Gully depicted New Zealand’s untouched alpine scenery, as did photographers like the Burton Brothers.
Landscape art has been used to attract settlers, particularly when land was being surveyed; to attract tourists; to make money; and to evoke a sense of place for a domestic audience.
These landscapes can be divided into several types or genres. One type is intended to convey ‘accurate’ topographical information – the arrangement of the natural features of an area. Another shows remote and wondrous scenic beauty. A third type – views of progress and civilisation – depicts a tamed, rural paradise.
A painting by Marcus King (1891– 1983) of a town and country scene in the 1950s falls within the last category, the tamed and cultivated countryside. The land is scenic yet productive, settled and modern with the urban and rural in harmony. Only patches of native bush survive. It is a subject that King explored in paintings, in the promotional work he did for the New Zealand government’s Tourist and Publicity Department, and in his artwork for stamps.
The painting conjures up the post-World War II economic boom when New Zealand’s agricultural products were in high demand. This ‘golden age’ is emphasised by the rolling pastures, livestock, and a truck laden with wool bales.
King’s well-ordered landscapes are distinct from nineteenth century ones that were atmospheric, topographic views of a ‘new’ land and its spectacular mountain scenery. A painting by British-born artist Charles N Worsley (1862–1923) of Mt Sefton from Hermitage is in keeping with this nineteenth-century fashion, partly derived from the work of British painter J M W Turner. It is a familiar type of work – other examples of this type of landscape in Te Papa’s collection include works by painters such as John Gibb, William Menzies Gibb, Thomas Attwood, and William George Baker.
In 1898, Worsley came to New Zealand where he devoted himself to painting landscapes of both the North and South Islands for more than twenty years. This painting shows the Mueller Glacier and Hooker River in front of Mt Sefton. A shepherd and sheep are dots in the foreground and are dwarfed by the grandeur of the distant glacier and mountains and the sheer, black rock face at the right of the painting. Worsley adds more ‘atmosphere’ to this scene by showing the effect of sunlight shining through turbulent storm clouds.
A human presence in the landscape is suggested by the painting’s title. Worsley has painted it from the vantage point of the original Hermitage mountain accommodation built in 1884. At the time of this painting, the Hermitage provided a sanctuary and base in the mountains for climbers and wealthy tourists escaping ‘brain-fag’ and the ennui of urban life.
Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database (2006)