MOUNT DOMETT PAINTED BY EDWYN TEMPLE

Edwyn Temple (1835-1921)

Mount Domett (1, 942m - 6, 370 ft)

 New Zealand (South Island) 

  In Mount Domett and Tarn Roslyn, Waitaki river, watercolor on paper, 1883, Private collection 

The mountain 
Mount Domett (1, 942m- 6, 370 ft) is a peak on the North Otago western horizon when viewed from the coastal town of Oamaru. It was named by Commissioner Walter Mantell on 25th October 1848 in honour of the New Zealand politician, Alfred Domett. It would have been first ascended sometime after 1854 when the area went through an extensive period of European settlement. No doubt an ascent was made by a landowner or shepherd on an exploratory excursion into the range.
Mount Domett and the other peaks of the St. Marys Range are frequent objectives for tramping and climbing parties from Oamaru, although the peak is within day-trip range from the southern city of Dunedin, two hours away by main roads. Road access to the peak ends no closer than 10 kilometres, although further access on foot or by 4WD vehicle is possible over old, disused vehicle tracks (although often washed out).
The mountain offers views of the North Otago and South Canterbury coastal plains and the Waitaki River and its hydro-electric lakes, to New Zealand's highest peak, Aoraki/Mount Cook, and the chain of the Southern Alps running south towards Mount Aspiring/Tititea. There are further spectacular views to the south and west, towards the Strath Taieri and the Maniototo Basin and the western ranges of the Otago province.

The artist 
 Edwyn Temple, or 'The Captain' as he was referred to by his friends and family, was born in England in 1835, the son of Lieutenant Colonel John Temple and the grandson of Grenville Temple-Temple 9th Baronet of Stowe.  Educated at Rugby School, he entered the military services in 1853. During a brief period in Italy a relative, Princess Pondalfina, recognised his ability and engaged a tutor to teach him the rudiments of painting.
Temple was ensigned in 1854 and became a Captain in the 55th Foot (Westmoreland) Regiment in 1858. He later served in the Crimea and in India from 1864 to 1866. By that time he had married and the first of a family of nine children had been born. It was more than nine years after retiring from the army that he decided to emigrate with his wife and family to New Zealand, arriving in Lyttelton on 25 October 1879.
Full Wandering vertexes  entry  =>

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

AORAKI / MOUNT COOK BY EDWYN TEMPLE

EDWYN TEMPLE (1835-1921)

Aoraki/ Mount Cook (3,724m - 12, 218ft) 

New Zealand

 In Mount  Cook and the Old Hermitage, watercolor, Private Collection 

The mountain 

Aoraki / Mount Cook (3,724m - 12, 218ft)  is the highest mountain in New Zealand. Its height since 2014 is listed as 3,724 m since December 1991, due to a rockslide and subsequent erosion. It lies in the Southern Alps, the mountain range which runs the length of the South Island. A popular tourist destination, it is also a favourite challenge for mountain climbers. Aoraki / Mount Cook consists of three summits, from South to North the Low Peak (3,593 m or 11,788 ft), Middle Peak (3,717 m or 12,195 ft) and High Peak. The summits lie slightly south and east of the main divide of the Southern Alps, with the Tasman Glacier to the east and the Hooker Glacier to the southwest.The mountain is in the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, in the Canterbury region. The park was established in 1953 and along with Westland National Park, Mount Aspiring National Park and Fiordland National Park forms one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The park contains more than 140 peaks standing over 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) and 72 named glaciers, which cover 40 percent of its 700 square kilometres (170,000 acres).

Aoraki is the name of a person in the traditions of the Ngāi Tahu iwi; an early name for the South Island is Te Waka o Aoraki (Aoraki's Canoe). In the past many believed it meant "Cloud Piercer",  Historically, the Māori name has been spelt Aorangi, using the standard Māori form.
Full Wandering vertexes  entry  =>

The artist 
 Edwyn Temple, or 'The Captain' as he was referred to by his friends and family, was born in England in 1835, the son of Lieutenant Colonel John Temple and the grandson of Grenville Temple-Temple 9th Baronet of Stowe.  Educated at Rugby School, he entered the military services in 1853. During a brief period in Italy a relative, Princess Pondalfina, recognised his ability and engaged a tutor to teach him the rudiments of painting.
Temple was ensigned in 1854 and became a Captain in the 55th Foot (Westmoreland) Regiment in 1858. He later served in the Crimea and in India from 1864 to 1866. By that time he had married and the first of a family of nine children had been born. It was more than nine years after retiring from the army that he decided to emigrate with his wife and family to New Zealand, arriving in Lyttelton on 25 October 1879.
Full Wandering vertexes  entry  =>

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT EARNSLAW / PIKIRAKATAHI BY JOHN TURNBULL THOMSON

EDWYN TEMPLE (1835-1921)

Mount Earnslaw / Pikirakatahi (2,819m -9,249 ft)

New Zealand

 In  Mount Earnslaw-Lake Wakatipu 1883 oil on canvas - Private collection New Zealand 

The Mountain 

Mount Earnslaw, (2,819m -9,249 ft) also named Pikirakatahi by Māori is located on New Zealand's South Island. It is named after Earnslaw (formerly Herneslawe) village in the parish of Eccles, Berwickshire, hometown of the surveyor John Turnbull Thomson's father.

Mount Earnslaw is within Mount Aspiring National Park at the southern end of the Forbes Range of New Zealand's Southern Alps. It is located 25 kilometres north of the settlement of Glenorchy, which lies at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu.

The painter 
 Edwyn Temple, or 'The Captain' as he was referred to by his friends and family, was born in England in 1835, the son of Lieutenant Colonel John Temple and the grandson of Grenville Temple-Temple 9th Baronet of Stowe.  Educated at Rugby School, he entered the military services in 1853. During a brief period in Italy a relative, Princess Pondalfina, recognised his ability and engaged a tutor to teach him the rudiments of painting.
Temple was ensigned in 1854 and became a Captain in the 55th Foot (Westmoreland) Regiment in 1858. He later served in the Crimea and in India from 1864 to 1866. By that time he had married and the first of a family of nine children had been born. It was more than nine years after retiring from the army that he decided to emigrate with his wife and family to New Zealand, arriving in Lyttelton on 25 October 1879.
Within a very short time of his arrival, he was established and developed a network of ex-military friends in Christchurch. Some of these were among the group that got together in June 1880 to form the Canterbury Society of Arts. Temple's role in its formation cannot be overstated and, in acknowledgment of this, he was elected to the key role of Secretary/Treasurer of the Society.
In 1882 he moved to Geraldine to a property, 'Castlewood', which he had purchased the previous year. There he lived and farmed for almost three decades, a Justice of the Peace from 1883, but mostly concentrating on painting before retiring to live in Timaru in the 1900s.
There is no question that Temple had an inner drive. He was a compulsive sketcher who drew on any piece of paper readily at hand as the mood took him; letters, ledgers, telegrams, envelopes, even wrapping paper were all targets for his pen, pencil or brush. His imagination was fertile and, coupled with a sardonic wit, resulted in many lively and amusing drawings and paintings. Though he was not considered to be a professional artist in the accepted sense, he was serious in his endeavours with painting and his approach was nothing short of professional. To have spent the time to produce such a quantity of work, of which those in this exhibition are only a small representation, shows that he was not just engaged in a diverting pastime.
Between 1880 and 1892, which was his most active period as an artist in New Zealand, Temple made many trips over the South Island with his relative and friend James Dupré Lance of Horsley Down Station. He also travelled with the government Surveyor John H. Baker. It was during these trips that he made sketches that were later developed into more major paintings, many of which he regularly showed at either the Canterbury Society of Arts, or the Otago Art Society annual exhibitions where they often received favourable notice from contemporary reviewers.
Temple also exhibited beyond New Zealand, first in 1880 in Melbourne, then in 1886 at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition London. He was also represented at the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition in Wellington in 1885 and the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition held in Dunedin in 1889–90.
He made return trips to England in 1892 and 1909 during which he made many landscape paintings.
Although the landscape was dominant in Temple's work, it was the alpine region of the South Island that particularly interested him and made him recognised in Canterbury as a specialist in this genre. Lakes Wanaka and Wakatipu were of special interest and these locales formed the backdrop to his imagery. From an early age Temple had visited Switzerland and the Lake District where several of his uncles had established themselves as gentry around Lake Ullswater and, in a sense, he had found a New Zealand equivalent to this experience. At the time of his death in 1920 Temple had amassed a considerable body of work that included paintings and drawings from his imagination that were pure fantasy as well as landscape, caricature and narrative subjects. Today, many hundreds of works are held by Temple's descendants scattered throughout the world but he is also represented in collections held by the National Library of Australia, Canberra; Hocken Library, Dunedin; Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; Centre of Contemporary Art (incorporating Canterbury Society of Arts) Christchurch; as well as the Robert McDougall Art Gallery.
=> Courstesy Christchurch Art Gallery / Te Puna o Waiwhetū
___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT PEEL BY EDWYN TEMPLE

EDWYN TEMPLE (1835-1921)

Mount Peel   (1,743 m  - 5,719 ft) 

 New Zealand 

 

In Canterbury plain, New Zealand ( Mt Peel)

Christchurch Art Gallery / Te Puna o Waiwhetū

The mountain 
Mount Peel  often refered as Big Mount Peel   (1,743 m  - 5,719 ft) is a mountain located in South Canterbury, New Zealand. It consists of three peaks :  Big Mt Peel,  (1,743 m  - 5,719 ft),  Middle Mt Peel (1,583 m or 5,194 ft) and Little Mt Peel/Huatekerekere (1,311 m or 4,301 ft).
Mt Peel is  owned by the Department of Conservation and Mt Peel Station. It lies just south of the Rangitata river and is 22 kilometres (14 mi) north-west of Geraldine.
The Peel Forest Park Scenic Reserve is the largest in the Geraldine area, covering 769 hectares (1,900 acres) around Little Mt Peel/Huatekerekere.
The nearby forest was named by Francis Jollie, who settled in the area in late 1853. Jollie had named the forest after Sir Robert Peel, the British Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who had died in 1850, the year that Canterbury was founded. The mountain and the nearby community of Peel Forest also took Peel's name.
Mt Peel and the surrounding Peel Forest contain many well maintained and popular walking tracks.
Flora and fauna. There is lots of unique flora and fauna in Peel Forest. The three largest trees in Peel Forest belong to the family Podocarpaceae, a very ancient family going back in time more than 100 million years. The three large trees are kahikatea (white pine), tōtara, and mataī (black pine).
There are at least ten species of native bird occur in the forest including bellbird, silvereye, tomtit, rifleman, grey warbler, kererū, fantail, silvereye, shining cuckoo and longtailed cuckoo. There are also many lizards including the jeweled gecko and McCann's skink.

The artist 
 Edwyn Temple, or 'The Captain' as he was referred to by his friends and family, was born in England in 1835, the son of Lieutenant Colonel John Temple and the grandson of Grenville Temple-Temple 9th Baronet of Stowe.  Educated at Rugby School, he entered the military services in 1853. During a brief period in Italy a relative, Princess Pondalfina, recognised his ability and engaged a tutor to teach him the rudiments of painting.
Temple was ensigned in 1854 and became a Captain in the 55th Foot (Westmoreland) Regiment in 1858. He later served in the Crimea and in India from 1864 to 1866. By that time he had married and the first of a family of nine children had been born. It was more than nine years after retiring from the army that he decided to emigrate with his wife and family to New Zealand, arriving in Lyttelton on 25 October 1879.
Within a very short time of his arrival, he was established and developed a network of ex-military friends in Christchurch. Some of these were among the group that got together in June 1880 to form the Canterbury Society of Arts. Temple's role in its formation cannot be overstated and, in acknowledgment of this, he was elected to the key role of Secretary/Treasurer of the Society.
In 1882 he moved to Geraldine to a property, 'Castlewood', which he had purchased the previous year. There he lived and farmed for almost three decades, a Justice of the Peace from 1883, but mostly concentrating on painting before retiring to live in Timaru in the 1900s.
There is no question that Temple had an inner drive. He was a compulsive sketcher who drew on any piece of paper readily at hand as the mood took him; letters, ledgers, telegrams, envelopes, even wrapping paper were all targets for his pen, pencil or brush. His imagination was fertile and, coupled with a sardonic wit, resulted in many lively and amusing drawings and paintings. Though he was not considered to be a professional artist in the accepted sense, he was serious in his endeavours with painting and his approach was nothing short of professional. To have spent the time to produce such a quantity of work, of which those in this exhibition are only a small representation, shows that he was not just engaged in a diverting pastime.
Between 1880 and 1892, which was his most active period as an artist in New Zealand, Temple made many trips over the South Island with his relative and friend James Dupré Lance of Horsley Down Station. He also travelled with the government Surveyor John H. Baker. It was during these trips that he made sketches that were later developed into more major paintings, many of which he regularly showed at either the Canterbury Society of Arts, or the Otago Art Society annual exhibitions where they often received favourable notice from contemporary reviewers.
Temple also exhibited beyond New Zealand, first in 1880 in Melbourne, then in 1886 at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition London. He was also represented at the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition in Wellington in 1885 and the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition held in Dunedin in 1889–90.
He made return trips to England in 1892 and 1909 during which he made many landscape paintings.
Although the landscape was dominant in Temple's work, it was the alpine region of the South Island that particularly interested him and made him recognised in Canterbury as a specialist in this genre. Lakes Wanaka and Wakatipu were of special interest and these locales formed the backdrop to his imagery. From an early age Temple had visited Switzerland and the Lake District where several of his uncles had established themselves as gentry around Lake Ullswater and, in a sense, he had found a New Zealand equivalent to this experience. At the time of his death in 1920 Temple had amassed a considerable body of work that included paintings and drawings from his imagination that were pure fantasy as well as landscape, caricature and narrative subjects. Today, many hundreds of works are held by Temple's descendants scattered throughout the world but he is also represented in collections held by the National Library of Australia, Canberra; Hocken Library, Dunedin; Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; Centre of Contemporary Art (incorporating Canterbury Society of Arts) Christchurch; as well as the Robert McDougall Art Gallery.

=> Courstesy Christchurch Art Gallery / Te Puna o Waiwhetū

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau