Heaphy

Born in England c1820, Englishman Charles Heaphy - the first 'New Zealander' to win the Victoria Cross, the first European to explore the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island and the most distinguished 19th-century landscape painter in that country is, by any measure, a central figure in colonial history. In this engaging book, lavishly illustrated with Heaphy's paintings, drawings and maps, author Iain Sharp reveals the story of Heaphy's life and art.From his earliest surviving watercolour of birdlife in the Marlborough Sounds in August 1839 to his last known sketch on the back of an envelope, showing Maori witnesses at a Native Land Court hearing in December 1879, Charles Heaphy's paintings and drawings represent a remarkable visual diary of settler life. The works are without parallel in their evocative richness and have been a prototype for artists from Colin McCahon to Bill Hammond.Drawing on newspapers, diaries and letters as well as Heaphy's art, Sharp depicts a man who embodied the contradictions of European life in the colonies. Heaphy could be both a dreamy romantic and a self-serving opportunist, a man able to shoot a wild pig one day and discourse to scholars on geological science the next, someone who became almost as familiar with the back country as his Maori companions while thinking all the time of Europe. In charting the course of Heaphy's extraordinary life as artist, explorer, surveyor and soldier, Sharp tells us much about the settler culture and history.