A striking original Baxter-process print illustrating an early Wesleyan missionary landing in New Zealand, with the figures assembled beneath Mount Taranaki and the ship Triton lying offshore.

Bibliographic Details

Artist: George Baxter (1804–1867).
Title: The Reverend J. Waterhouse Superintending the Landing of the Missionaries at Taranaki, New Zealand.
Place: London.
Date: 1844.
Medium: Engraving printed in oil colours by the Baxter process.
Dimensions: Approximately 28.5 × 40.5 cm.
Presentation: Unframed; laid down to card.

Condition

Laid down to card, with only thread margins remaining. A few very minor surface blemishes and some general fading or softening of the colours. The reverse of the card displays age-toning and pale scattered foxing. Despite these points, the composition remains attractive and the principal details are clearly visible. Please examine the photographs carefully.

Description

An original 1844 colour print by George Baxter, depicting the Reverend John Waterhouse overseeing the arrival of a Wesleyan missionary party at Taranaki, New Zealand. Waterhouse stands prominently on the beach as Mr Creed approaches in a boat and Mrs Creed is carried ashore by Māori women. The ship Triton, a Māori canoe and the distinctive peak of Mount Taranaki complete the dramatic composition.

The image is one of Baxter’s best-known New Zealand subjects and combines missionary history, early colonial imagery and Māori representation within an ambitious panoramic scene. Baxter never visited New Zealand, and the landscape was constructed from existing accounts and visual sources, resulting in a romanticised vision of the landing.

Baxter’s patented process employed an engraved key plate together with multiple colour-printing blocks, allowing richly coloured images to be produced mechanically at a time when most comparable prints were coloured individually by hand. The depth and range of colour achieved made his work an important landmark in the development of nineteenth-century colour printing.

A desirable original example with strong appeal to collectors of George Baxter prints, early New Zealand views, missionary history, Māori-related material and Victorian colour printing.

Notes

The scene shows the missionary party associated with the Reverend Charles Creed arriving at New Plymouth, with the Reverend Waterhouse receiving them on shore. The landscape is partly imaginative: Mount Taranaki and the tropical-looking vegetation were rendered according to the limited visual information available to Baxter in London.