Sir William Fox
Aotearoa New Zealand / British, b.1812, d.1893
Franz Josef Glacier
- c. 1872
- Watercolour
- Purchased, 1988
- 465 x 555 x 25mm
- 88/34
- View on google maps
Location: South Gallery
Tags: glaciers (bodies of water), landscapes (representations), mountains, natural landscapes, wash technique
As a politician and colonial settler, William Fox’s paintings of Aotearoa New Zealand formed part of the process of laying claim to the country for British settlers and the Crown. Fox was a surveyor, a resident agent for the New Zealand Company, and later premier of Aotearoa. He explored many of the country’s remote areas, and his paintings generally depicted the land as vacant, despite its long occupation and use by Māori. Here, Fox paints Kā Roimata-a-Hinehukatere, renamed Franz Josef Glacier, one of the most remarkable and dynamic Te Tai Poutini West Coast glacial environments. The adjacent glacier that today bears Fox’s name was known to Māori as Te Moeka-o-Tuawe.
He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)
Exhibition History
The Franz Josef glacier is located in Westland National Park on the West Coast of the South Island. William Fox painted a number of glacier scenes during a trip to the area when he was in his third term as New Zealand’s Prime Minister.
Fox initially studied as a lawyer and he is unlikely to have had any formal art training. However, his work as a surveyor required him to make sketches of the new land. He has painted this work with carefully controlled watercolour washes, typical of his typographical work, and he has captured something of the grandeur of the glacier and the mountains beyond.
Born in Durham, England, Fox studied law in London. He married Sarah Halcomb in 1842, the same year they emigrated to New Zealand. As an early artist-surveyor and resident agent for the New Zealand Company, Fox explored many of the country’s remote areas.
(Gallery opening hang, 2003)