Abstract:
Charles Heaphy was a nineteenth-century artist, surveyor, explorer, politician and soldier, whose work was inextricably linked with the colonisation process in New Zealand. Heaphy’s views of the landscape were framed by pictorial and social interests, and his travels were motivated by personal and professional concerns. This study focuses on specific journeys largely undertaken early in Heaphy’s career, due to the wealth of material available to document those times. The journeys assessed in detail are: his travels on the New Zealand Company ship the Tory; his exploratory expeditions in Taranaki, the Nelson region and the West Coast of the South Island; and his work with the geologist Hochstetter. Heaphy’s paintings, drawings and lithographs are examined alongside his published and unpublished texts in order to arrive at a more complex understanding of his oeuvre. The relationship between Heaphy’s work and that of his contemporaries such as William Fox and Edward Jerningham Wakefield is also considered.
This study investigates Heaphy’s work within the context of recent travel and landscape theory, and uses these ideas to look at his representations as products of the colonial world. Alongside such post-colonial considerations is a discussion of his use of numerous pre-existing genres and conventions, and how those relate to the meanings of his depicted and described landscapes. Some of those conventions, such as the picturesque and the sublime, affect both visual and written material; others he utilised, such as in his hunting still-life and bird paintings, were exclusively pictorial forms. It is argued that interpreting his work from a single theoretical perspective would be reductive. The intertwining of these tropes with his actual experiences of place and his underlying political motivations make possible multi-layered readings of his works. By examining these various aspects of his travels and ways of recording, this study aims to contribute to the discourse about colonial landscapes, and the cultural construction of New Zealand.
Description:
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