Auckland 1852 From Queen Street Wharf

J C Veitch’s watercolour is a loose copy of a lithograph completed by Patrick Hogan in 1852. Hogan arrived in Auckland in 1849 and worked as a surveyor and the director of a drawing class at the Mechanics Institute in Auckland. Veitch, who studied at the Glasgow School of Art before moving to Dunedin in 1874, has faithfully transferred the clearly delineated forms and geometric quality of Hogan’s lithograph into his watercolour. Showing the wharf at the bottom of Queen Street, the watercolour depicts the industry of a burgeoning city: timber is lined up alongside the water’s edge to be placed on a cart; a man shovels cement on the street; people congregate outside stores. Veitch’s use of watercolour has invested the scene with a greater sense of movement and light. The swirling, voluminous clouds in the top right-hand corner are his innovation and enrich the scene with dynamism.

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