CHARLES HEAPHY PRINTS

Turnbull Library Record, Volume X, 1 January 1953, Page 16

CHARLES HEAPHY PRINTS

This year the Friends of the Turnbull Library have published two prints of water-colours painted during the artistically and adventurously vital first year of the life in New Zealand of Major Charles Heaphy, V.C. Charles Heaphy was possibly under eighteen years of age, and certainly not more than nineteen, when he was appointed official draughtsman to the New Zealand Company in April, 1839. On 20th September, 1839, he arrived at Port Nicholson in the Tory with the survey party that the Company sent out to prepare the way for its first settlers. Colonel William Wakefield then bought the site of the future Wellington from the Maoris.

Heaphy went north with Colonel Wakefield, and the party travelled overland from the Kaipara to the Bay of Islands. In 1841 he accompanied the expedition to fix the site of Nelson. He was later farmer, explorer, soldier, surveyor, member of Parliament and judge of the Native Land Court.

In the early years of his residence in New Zealand, Heaphy proved himself a prolific as well as a competent painter. The Alexander Turnbull Library holds about fifty of his original water-colours, and it is hoped that the two prints now produced will be the first of a series. They are: Wellington Harbour, showing the beach, now Lambton Quay, and Thorndon, in 1840. Kauri forest on the Northern Wairoa river, showing pit-sawing of timber, 1840. The price of each print is 10s. 6d., but a reduction of twenty-five per cent, in the price is given to members.