When the ship Echunga sank off Napier at the Western Spit in 1868, documentary paintings such as this, executed in the speediest of mediums — watercolour — would have served the same purpose as digital media, and this delicate little painting by Robert Park is just as enlightening.
Before its sinking, the cargo ship Echunga arrived in Timaru with a load of general goods and 27 British settlers. Before setting sail for home it was loaded with wool bales, its captain planning to make a quick dispatch back to London in time for the May Wool Sales.
It wasn’t to be — as the ship passed Napier, severe gusty winds and heavy seas overtook the vessel, and the Echunga ran aground on Western Spit.
The crew made it to shore, but within hours the ship had entirely broken up and almost all its cargo was lost.
This resonant little image, painted immediately after the event, must have been a particularly captivating vision in its day and serves as a great historical record of the occurrence.
Yet, it is more than a document of the ship’s grounding. The beautifully handled atmospheric conditions in the scene reveal the artist’s ability to shift within one painting from the tragedy of the ship breaking up on the shore to the calm of the figures on the beach around their fire.
Much of our visual memory of 1800s Aotearoa is shaped by such paintings, yet few of these were created by professional artists. Many, like these, were made by soldiers, land agents, or surveyors for the New Zealand Company.
Glaswegian Robert Park arrived on the ship Cuba with the New Zealand Company surveying team in 1839. Park was a cartographer, lithographer, trained engineer, and artist. His brother was the better-known sculptor, Patric Park, who had studied in Rome under the tutelage of neo-classicist Bertel Thorvaldsen.
Park created several important plans, including those for Wellington and Nelson. He had first stayed in Te Matau-a-Māui / Hawke’s Bay in the 1850s, when Douglas McLean contracted him to complete surveys of the area. In 1868, when he painted this work, he was 58 years old.
In its ability to capture the atmosphere of the day, the watercolour suggests Park was aware of the shift towards a more emotional and spontaneous approach in European painting, where there was a focus on capturing the fleeting effects of nature.
Scottish artists such as William McTaggart had begun to explore more expressive techniques that emphasised light and atmosphere in the 1860s.
Parks’ work can be seen as part of this evolving tradition, blending the delicate precision of earlier styles with emerging gestural and atmospheric qualities. In this way the painting transcends Park’s amateur status — not half bad for an engineer/surveyor living in Aotearoa in the 19th century.
You can view this captivating work in the MTG Hawke’s Bay Tai Ahuriri collection online.
