Drawn from Nature: art and science in the work of John Buchanan

Abstract

Scottish botanist and draughtsman John Buchanan (1819-1898) is associated with some of the New Zealand government's first forays into science yet his watercolour, Milford Sound, looking north-west from Freshwater Basin (1863), has become an icon of New Zealand's art history. In terms of his professional endeavours, he could be described as the colonial Victorian version of the Renaissance man, grounded in science but excelling at art. The aim of this study is to examine the role of objectivity and subjectivity in his work, and to read Buchanan's art through his science. Buchanan's life's work relied on the close observation of nature, and he deployed skills honed for producing designs for calico printing in Scotland to document flora, fauna and landscape in his adopted country of New Zealand. Methodologically, this study makes use of three existing narrative modes used for writing about nineteenth century New Zealand art. The first mode frames the art in relationship to nineteenth century illustration technologies, and finds Buchanan's use of photography and lithography to be innovative. The second mode examines Buchanan's work in relation to his contemporaries and finds him to working within existing genres and conventions derived from the traditions of European landscape and natural history illustration. The third mode investigates Buchanan's work in relationship to post-colonial theory and finds that as an artist depicting colonial science for governmental institutions, Buchanan was inevitably in the service of Empire and economics. The structure combines a biographical ordering with a thematic approach, analysing the development of Buchanan's art in relationship to his personal circumstances. Here it is found that Buchanan's position in the hierarchy of colonial science, commitment to scientific investigation and new technologies all affected his depiction of the natural world. It is concluded that interpreting Buchanan's work from a single theoretical perspective would be reductive. It is the intertwining of these tropes with his embodied experience of place, and his social motivations, which make multi-layered readings of his work possible. Using a case study approach, first his botanical collecting is examined, then his illustration, uses of photography, nature printing and landscape painting is discussed, before the thesis ends with a consideration of his production of "paper museums" at the end of his life. By examining his processes and ways of recording, as well as the reception of his work, this study aims to contribute to the discourse about colonial art, museology and the cultural construction of New Zealand.