It was my only win at the online art auction. I had bid on two dozen items, but one by one they went beyond my self-imposed limit – and then beyond my “well, okay, maybe I can go a little higher” limit. I wasn’t surprised at my lack of success. The advent of online auctions has boosted the number of participants, which, in turn, has raised prices for many items in the past few years. I imagine this has been good for business in out-of-the-way places such as Dunedin. Someone at a computer in Auckland or Sydney can make a bid as easily as someone in Mosgiel or Port Chalmers.
I also wasn’t completely surprised by my one win. It was an attractive watercolour showing a grand white building with towers topped in gold, somewhat obscured by trees but accentuated by a blue sky (pictured top left). However, it had been blandly labelled “trees and buildings” with an “illegible signature” – not the kind of description to inspire a bidding war. It came late in the auction when bidders were perhaps tiring of the chase.
I thought it was worth pursuing. Visiting the auction house a few days before the sale, I could see there was skill and care in the work.
I didn’t recognise the building or the setting, but it was pleasing to look at, and the image did not appear damaged by light or foxing (sun and damp can do terrible things to works on paper). I took a picture of the painting, and an extra picture of that illegible signature. Enlarged on a phone screen, it was as clear as an Otago winter’s day: E Waymouth 06. Though 2006 was a possibility, the painter’s style and the charming wooden frame certainly suggested 1906.
The year would be confirmed once I identified the painter. It didn’t take long. A simple online search of “E Waymouth nz artist” led me to Eleanor Mary Hughes, née Waymouth (1882-1959), described in Wikipedia as “a New Zealand landscape artist who mostly painted in watercolours”. Not a household name, but one with interesting family and creative connections.
Locating the artist
Born in Christchurch, Eleanor was the daughter of Frederick and Alice Waymouth. Her father was secretary and later managing director of the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company, which provisioned a number of vessels bound for the Antarctic (indeed, in an account of the 1901-04 Discovery expedition, Robert Falcon Scott gratefully acknowledged Frederick Waymouth for his assistance). Her sister Alice was also a notable artist, specialising in metalwork.
The Waymouths built a grand family home in Christchurch named Karewa. Rechristened Mona Vale by its next owner, the philanthropist Annie Quayle Townend, it survives as a popular attraction in Fendalton, just northwest of Hagley Park.
Waymouth studied painting at the Canterbury College School of Art and with the recently arrived British landscape artist Charles N Worsley. In 1904, she travelled to London with her mother to further her art studies. She married the artist Robert Morson Hughes in 1910 and settled in southwest England, where the couple became closely associated with the Newlyn School art colony, a collection of artists noted for painting en plein air, or out of doors.
There, she encountered another expatriate painter who spent time in the area, Frances Hodgkins. Though never as famous as Newlyn associates such as Frank Bramley or Stanhope Forbes, Waymouth was a successful watercolourist, showing regularly at London’s Royal Academy between 1911 and 1939. Her works survive in a number of New Zealand and UK museums.
My expertise is in 19th-century literature and culture, so almost anything associated with the era interests me. Having been repeatedly outbid, I thought I’d go to $150; fortunately (for me), bidding ended at $80. I promised myself I would skip afternoon coffee for a week. I didn’t, of course.
The next morning, I gathered up my prize. Sometimes, when you take an auction find out into the cold Dunedin light, your heart sinks as all the imperfections become obvious. That wasn’t the case this time: despite a spot or two of foxing, it looked even better than I expected.
In Search of a Subject
I had an artist and a year but not the subject. Someone had written “Wien” (Vienna) on the cardboard backing. Austria’s capital has a famous white and gold church, but this wasn’t it. I popped my picture into Google Images, my preferred online port of call when researching an unidentified building or landscape, and hoped for the best. While Google offered several buildings with similar towers, nothing really matched.
I looked for clues in the image itself. In the lower left, a tree, perhaps a weeping willow, drapes over a body of water. On the right, four more trees grouped together offer a welcoming stretch of shade. Seven or eight figures seem to be approaching an entry way. Could they be worshippers? The Mediterranean-style structure was reminiscent of a church or mosque, though the Union Jack unmistakably flies from one tower.
I went back to the artist. Digging through the newspapers on Papers Past, I discovered that Waymouth returned to Christchurch (via Cape Town, Hobart and Wellington) in late 1905. The bright blue sky did not suggest England, and the architecture had that certain variation-on-a-familiar-theme colonial quality – the way (say) the University of Otago’s stately clocktower nods to its inspiration in Glasgow. But I did not recognise this as a New Zealand building. If one flag was the Union Jack, the other was a few daubs of navy blue that might refer to any number of colonies or organisations. Could it have been a colonial structure in Tasmania or South Africa, perhaps admired by the artist during a stop on her sea journey?
I took a deep breath and thought of scholar friends who were knowledgeable about 19th-century Cape Town or Hobart. Fortunately, before I followed that more arduous path, my partner Grace suggested I start with Waymouth’s hometown. Since she’s usually right, I googled “Christchurch 1906,” and voilà, everything fell into place.
Wonders of NZ
On November 1, 1906, the New Zealand International Exhibition opened in Hagley Park. Inspired by the 1851 Great Exhibition in London’s Hyde Park, these events (later reinvented as world’s fairs in the United States) were symbols of empire, national identity, and (for some) forward-thinking. They brought together cultures and societies from around the globe and gave the host country an opportunity to show off its own wonders – natural and technological. Not all visitors were impressed. After visiting the 1851 Great Exhibition, the novelist Charles Dickens wrote, “I have a natural horror of sights and the fusion of so many sights in one has not decreased it.”
Having learnt that New Zealand was planning an exhibit for the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair, Prime Minister Richard Seddon decided that it was our turn to play host.
Christchurch’s 1906-07 Exhibition ran for 5½ months, attracting almost two million visits at a time when the nation’s population was less than a million. It included an art gallery featuring recent notable painters from the UK and New Zealand (including works by both Waymouth sisters), a concert hall that accommodated nearly 1500 attendees (and New Zealand’s first professional symphony orchestra), an area to exhibit locomotives and other industrial machinery, and even a fernery showcasing native and exotic specimens. The most popular feature was Wonderland, an immense playground offering camel rides, a helter-skelter, and a giant water chute that launched visitors into Victoria Lake.
Next to Wonderland, and more troublingly today, was a model pā, inhabited by a community of Māori dressed in traditional clothing and brought in from the North Island (Ngāi Tahu, perhaps because of the government’s ungenerous behaviour over land claims, offered only limited participation). Visitors were invited to watch carvers, haka performers and various staged ceremonies.
Exhibition-goers entered from Kilmore St, crossing the Avon River and entering through the main building, an imposing white structure with an enormous gold dome and two towers that sightseers could ascend to take in views of the city and its surroundings. As soon as I saw a photograph of the main building, I knew I had my subject.
No trace left
Today, looking towards Hagley Park from the north side of Cranmer Square, it’s surprisingly easy to imagine that vast, gold-domed structure filling the end of Kilmore St. Aside from some now-mature trees, the location of the exhibition is an empty field. The bridge across the Avon that led to the great building’s entrance is long gone, though many willows still line the river, dipping their branches towards the water.
I struggled to find an exact location for my picture; too much of the topography has changed. But standing beside the river, I could imagine the 24-year-old artist, recently returned from her first stay in England and inspired by the plein air methods of the Newlyn School, setting up her easel beside the Avon, just north of the main building’s entrance, and recording her impressions of this audacious attempt by her hometown to celebrate itself and its place in the British Empire. I could even fine-tune the date: since the exhibition opened in November, Waymouth must have painted the watercolour in the final months of 1906.
Mementos
The exhibition closed in April 1907. Although a success in terms of visitor numbers, the event lost money, and the Christchurch public were dismayed by the damage done to Hagley Park.
The fernery found a permanent (if much altered) home at nearby Mona Vale and is the only exhibition attraction that survives.
The water chute provided thrills for a few more years, first in Miramar, then in Auckland.
Most of the other structures, which were never intended to last, were dismantled and became firewood.
There is an extraordinary photograph from September 1907 showing one of the towers being toppled to the ground. It might have been seen as symbolising the end of an era. Later that same month, New Zealand ceased to be a British colony and became a Dominion.
Just as the exhibition faded from memory, so, too, did the context of my watercolour. Perhaps it was bought as a keepsake of the exhibition and hung in an Otago or Canterbury home for many years; so many that its origins were lost, its maker forgotten. Eventually, it became a pretty picture of trees and buildings, signed with an illegible signature. The painting hadn’t changed, but its significance had.
And now, its meaning has shifted again. When I look at the watercolour, I feel a sense of satisfaction. An image has been recovered, its artist and subject identified, and its ability to evoke a specific moment in Aotearoa’s history restored. It’s also unusual. While there are many prints, postcards, and black and white photographs commemorating the 1906 Exhibition, there are far fewer paintings.
More generally, the image reminds us that more than a century ago, New Zealand nurtured many talented female artists. It highlights the desires of a distant colony to be noticed. It is also a memento of the inequalities that shaped that distant colony. And it is a reminder that Christchurch had been evolving and recreating itself long before the earthquakes.
But that’s not what you really want to know, is it? Reader, I know what you’re wondering: what has my research added to its monetary value? I paid $80 for it. With an artist identified and subject firmly established, I suppose it might go for $700 or $800 in a Christchurch antiques shop.
But the truth is, there’s a limited market for artwork that celebrates colonial history. I don’t think I’ll sell it anytime soon. I will, however, put a label on it. In another 120 years, someone might thank me.
Thomas McLean is an associate professor in English at the University of Otago. In addition to his long-suffering partner Grace Moore, he thanks Ken Hall and Tim Jones of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū for their assistance.