Horeke or Kohukohu? Charles Heaphy’s View of the Kahu-Kahu Hokianga River 1839

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XXII, Issue 1, 1 May 1989, Page 33

Horeke or Kohukohu? Charles Heaphy’s View of the Kahu-Kahu Hokianga River 1839

MAUREEN LANDER

In 1916 Alexander Turnbull purchased a watercolour by Charles Heaphy from the New Zealand Company. Despite Heaphy’s unequivocal caption View of the Kahu-Kahu Hokianga River 1839 some researchers have maintained that the scene depicted is Horeke, a settlement a few miles upriver from Kohukohu. The most recent description of the painting, which accompanied its exhibition in Auckland in 1985, stated it is ‘Thomas McDonnell’s ship-building establishment at Horeke’. 1 This article examines and questions the information given by historians about the painting over a number of years.

In 1955 Ruth Ross wrote Early Traders, a booklet for the School Publications Branch. In it she included reproductions of Heaphy’s watercolour, and of an 1828 work by Augustus Earle, The E. 0. Rocky or Deptford Dockyard, on the E.O. Keangha River, N. Zealand, 1828. Their presentation on facing pages and the accompanying captions, which both give the location as Te Horeke, demonstrate that Ross assumed the paintings show the same place. In 1968, she outlined a theory that Heaphy’s watercolour was a composite representation of both Horeke and Kohukohu. 2 She initially quotes Jerningham Wakefield who, with Heaphy, travelled to the Hokianga on board the Tory.

It would appear from E. J. Wakefield’s brief description that at the time of the Tory’s visit . . . [G. F.] Russell was already doing a thriving business; ‘Two or three miles above the Narrows, and twenty-six miles from the river’s mouth, we anchored close to two other barques which were loading kauri timber for New South Wales. On the bank to our left was the house and store of a timber-dealer and general storekeeper.’ Timber loading was also in progress at Horeke —‘About two miles above Mangungu, we found the establishment of Lieutenant Macdonnell. ... A brig was loading kauri spars at the river-side. A nice wooden house, belonging to Lieutenant Macdonnell, stood on a terrace about fifty yards back from the river. Mr Mariner had a comfortable cottage on the bank below, buried in the midst of flourishing gardens.’ 3

Ross then states her composite theory: Thus Wakefield provides the identification key to one of Charles Heaphy’s most celebrated watercolours. . . . His View of the Hahu-Hahu [sic], Hokianga River, December 1839 has been identified both as Kohukohu and Horeke, but the painting, like the name (though the latter was perhaps accidental), is a composite of the two.

She substantiates her idea by referring to Wakefield’s description, to a Land Court plan of Kohukohu, and to a later sketch of the township by Moreton Jones. He [Heaphy] shows two barques loading timber —as described by Wakefield at Kohukohu —and shows two buildings on the bank —as the Land Court Plan shows was right for Kohukohu. But the terrace on which the buildings stand is unmistakably Horeke. Both house and store appear rather too palatial for either Kohukohu or Horeke at that time, yet in design the house more nearly approaches the Horeke dwelling . . . than that at Kohukohu . . . while the situation of the store is incorrect for Horeke but more or less right for Kohukohu. The hills behind more closely resemble the outline of Karewakirunga pa upriver from Horeke than that of the hills at the back of Kohukohu. Both stations sported a flagpole and a pair of cannon . . . but the bell shown by Heaphy was probably his own introduction, inspired by that at Mangungu. 4

To accept this argument it becomes necessary to assume that the artist draughtsman, Heaphy, allowed himself considerable artistic licence in recording the topography of a particular place by including details from various places along the way, with the innovation of a bell as a finishing touch. Such a practice appears to be at variance with Heaphy’s subsequent recording of places he visited. Like Ruth Ross, Anthony Murray-Oliver also claimed that Heaphy’s

watercolour was of Horeke. In A Folio of Watercolours by Charles Heaphy he states: On 2 December the ship anchored about twenty-six miles up the Hokianga Harbour at Kohukohu where, Jerningham wrote in his book, two other barques ‘were loading kauri timber for New South Wales’. Heaphy has included these ships in his view of Lt. Thomas McDonnell’s ship-building establishment at Horeke, a few miles further inland and on the opposite side of the harbour. Augustus Earle had made watercolours of the same scene as early as 1827 and 1828, which provide a useful comparison. 5

Murray-Oliver has attempted to solve the problem of Heaphy’s title by stating that Horeke is on the Kohukohu Reach of the Hokianga Harbour. Horeke is, in fact, situated on the south side of the river after it branches upstream from Kohukohu; whereas Kohukohu has always referred to a specific area on the northern bank. As with the Wakefield description, both Ross and Murray-Oliver sought to corroborate their evidence by reference to Augustus Earle’s painting of Horeke. This 1828 watercolour is undoubtedly at the root of the confusion, because of its marked similarities to Heaphy’s work. A close examination of the two paintings reveals some significant differences. Heaphy’s house has a chimney, a dormer window, a different roof-line, a greater number of windows along the front and an extended verandah supported by wooden posts. It is set back further from the edge of the bluff than the Earle house. Heaphy’s hills, although recorded later, are still bush covered, whereas Earle shows cleared hills. The shoreline is directly at the base of the hill in the Heaphy, with a row of mature looking trees growing below the house. There is no sign of the wide strip of foreshore, the shipyard or the cottage below the house which are evident in Earle’s painting.

While changes might be expected to have taken place in the eleven years between the paintings, written accounts of Horeke during the 1830 s do not indicate these particular changes. Wakefield’s description of Horeke, quoted earlier, confirms that there was at least still one cottage below McDonnell’s house on the terrace, amidst flourishing gardens. His continued account, which Ross did not quote, mentions the growth of‘fig and prickly pear’ and ‘a vineyard with three hundred and fifty vines of different sorts’. 6 The Reverend James Buller, writing about the late 1830 s, states that McDonnell had a battery of several cannon in front of his house, not just two as shown by Heaphy. 7 A sketch of Horeke by the Reverend Richard Taylor, drawn two months after Heaphy’s visit, provides more graphic evidence. Taylor’s viewpoint is from McDonnell’s house and shows a number of cannon in front of it, with cottages directly below on a wide strip of land between the base of the hill and the shoreline. In the light of this evidence of what Horeke actually looked like at the time Heaphy visited there, the question must be asked —why would he have chosen to ignore such a vast amount of detail if he had indeed

been painting Horeke? The answer must be that he was not painting Horeke at all or even a composite scene that included Horeke, as there is so little in his painting that corresponds with the Horeke of 1839. Yet it still remains necessary to show that the painting could instead have been an accurate view of Kohukohu at the time Heaphy visited on board the Tory. Wakefield’s description of Kohukohu is consistent with the content of Heaphy’s watercolour. The position of Russell’s house and store on the promontory at Kohukohu can be verified, as Ross pointed out, by an early plan of Kohukohu in the Old Land Claim files.

Although Ross and Murray-Oliver had accepted that the two barques loading timber were from the Kohukohu scene, they continued to maintain that the house was McDonnell’s at Horeke, rather than Russell’s at Kohukohu. They also asserted that the hills behind the house more closely resembled those at Horeke than those behind Kohukohu. 8 In this instance they have not taken into account Wakefield’s further description of Horeke: ‘Some cattle belonging to Mr Macdonnell were running on the tops of the hills, and one of these, which we bought for the ship, was very fair meat.’ 9 Certainly not the bush-clad hills depicted by Heaphy!

A photograph of Kohukohu taken in 1920 shows the outline of the hills behind the township to be essentially the same as in Heaphy’s watercolour. By this time, the Kohukohu hills had also been cleared. The photographer’s viewpoint is from slightly downstream of Heaphy’s

so that the base of the promontory is to the right and the house on the hill is out of the picture. Ross also argued that the house was closer in design to the one in the Earle painting than to Russell’s house at Kohukohu as painted by Moreton Jones in 1851. It may be a moot point but having already noted the number of differences between the Heaphy and the Earle, there seem to be an equal number of similarities between the Heaphy and the Jones. The style of the house is similar with the same roof-line, dormer window, chimney, wide verandah and number of windows along the front; the two cannon and flagpole occupy a similar position on the lawn in front of the house; the background hills are bush-covered in both; the position of the house on the promontory with the shore-line directly at the base of the hill and the point of the promontory to the left below the house corresponds in both. Furthermore, an entry in Moreton Jones’s Journal’ is of interest in that he mentions the bell, a detail Heaphy included in his sketch: ‘lt is an extremely pretty place, the house substantial and roomy in the middle of a well-kept lawn. All the offices and out-houses are well built and in order .... A bell summoning the workmen at regular hours.’ 1

Photographs provide further evidence that the house in the Heaphy painting was Russell’s. One taken by George Andrewes about 1919 shows the same roof-line and the single dormer window as in Heaphy’s watercolour. 11 Some alterations have obviously been made over the years. The verandah has been extended and blocked in at the ends and there is an extra chimney. The evidence is conclusive. Heaphy was not painting Horeke or a composite picture of any sort. Quite simply he recorded the scene as he had observed it from the Tory's anchorage at Kohukohu.

REFERENCES 1 Sea and Shore, exhibition brochure, Auckland City Art Gallery, March 1985. Text by Roger Blackley. 2 Ruth M. Ross, ‘Te Kohukohu; some notes on its European History, 1968’. Unpublished typescript. 3 Ross, pp. 2-3. Quotations are from Edward Jerningham Wakefield’s Adventure in New Zealand from 1839 to 1844 (London, 1845), pp. 149-50, 153. George Frederick Russell was formerly McDonnell’s manager at Horeke. He bought a property at Kohukohu in June 1839, and built a house and other buildings on it. There is evidence for this in the Old Land Claims Commission files. Land Claims Commission, OLC 1/971. National Archives of New Zealand. 4 Ross, p. 3. 5 Anthony Murray-Oliver, A Folio of Watercolours by Charles Heaphy (Christchurch, 1981), [p. 9]. Quotation from Wakefield’s Adventure, p. 149. 6 Wakefield, p. 154. 7 James Buller, Forty Years in New Zealand (London, 1878), p. 28.

8 ‘[Murray-Oliver] ... is still inclined to believe that the view is of Horeke. The T. M[oreton] Jones view of Captain Russell’s house at Kohukohu shows a steep hill directly behind the house and Mr Murray-Oliver feels that the topography of the Heaphy corresponds more closely to that of the Earle painting of Horeke’. Correspondence, 12 August 1986, with the Assistant Curator, Drawings and Prints Section, Alexander Turnbull Library. 9 Wakefield, p. 154. 10 T. Moreton Jones, Journal’, p. 65. Mitchell Library, Sydney. Moreton Jones was an officer on the survey ship Pandora, which was in the Hokianga River in 1851. 11 Russell died in 1855. The house and timber business passed to his son-in-law, John Webster, who lived there until the property was bought by Alfred C. Yarborough in 1875. George Andrewes was Yarborough’s son-in-law. Ruth Ross, ‘Te Kohukohu’, p. 4, noted that the house about ‘the turn of the century appears to bear some resemblance to that painted by Moreton Jones fifty years earlier’, but remained convinced that the Heaphy house was McDonnell’s and that the terrace on which it stood was ‘unmistakably Horeke’.