A Fresh on the Bealey, Canterbury

In the summer of 1874/75, John Hoyte travelled in the Arthur’s Pass area making sketches that he later worked up into finished watercolours. The most ambitious of result of this trip was Devil’s Punch Bowl on the Bealey which he offered for sale for 20 guineas in the 1875 Auckland Society of Arts annual exhibition. Devil’s Punch Bowl on the Bealey was purchased by Auckland Art Gallery in 1958. It has been missing since about 1978.

The title of the watercolour is intriguing as it employs the word ‘fresh’ in a manner that is now archaic. With A Fresh on the Bealey, Canterbury the word ‘fresh’ means ‘a rush of water in a stream’. This usage would have been known at the time when it was painted connoting water that is moving rapidly as it is when the water from the Punch Bowl waterfall meets the Bealey River as it is shown in the painting.

Mountain waterfalls and streams fascinated John Hoyte and he painted them often during his time living in the South Island.

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