Artwork Information

Dictated by her ship’s schedule, Constance Gordon-Cumming’s stay in Tahiti included an all too brief visit of just three days to the nearby island of Mo’orea. She described her disappointment ‘as the island is indescribably lovely, and I longed to linger at every point’*. ‘As we rowed along inside the reef’ she noted her initial impression: ‘each turn revealed new marvels of that most lovely coast, which combines the softest beauties of rich foliage with the most weird grandeur of mountain gloom. The island is by far the most wonderful I have ever seen. Just one confused mass of basaltic crags and pinnacles’*.

When the opportunity to return to Mo’orea a month later for an extended stay presented itself Gordon-Cumming delighted in returning to the ‘artist’s paradise’*. She made this view of Ōpūnohu Bay, on the north side of the island at this time. Gordon-Cumming’s watercolour features the stupendous pinnacle of Mt Mou’aroa at its centre, with the island’s turquoise waters gently lapping the shore. At anchor is a three masted ship, juxtaposed with a va’a, a local outrigger canoe. Two children play at the water’s edge, while their carers take refuge from the sun in a beach fale.

The inscription in the bottom left ‘M. Valles’ house’ refers to the nearby home of coffee and vanilla plantation owners with whom Gordon-Cumming became acquainted. On her return visit in December 1877, she borrowed a horse and travelling side-saddle crossed the island to pay a social-call on Madame Valles at her home, ‘a lovely nest, perched high on the hillside…from its verandahs you look through a frame of pure scarlet hybiscus [sic] to the bluest lagoons, divided from the purply ocean beyond by the line of gleaming white breakers which bound the coral-reef.’* This is possibly the house nestled in the foothills to the right of Mt Mou’aroa.

Valles’ husband a retired French naval officer was very ill, so the work of the plantation including hand fertilising the flowers fell to her and her son. Accompanying Valles on her morning chores, Gordon-Cumming observed ‘I realised that toil and hardship are found even in paradise’. The reference to ‘M. Valles’ also recalls sadness that marked Gordon-Cumming’s first visit to Ōpūnohu Bay the month prior. While in Tahiti she had befriended Mrs Simpson, known as the ‘mother of missions’, who succumbed to influenza and was buried there on the day she visited. Madame Valles was Simpson’s daughter. The contemplative scene can be read as a quiet and reflective memorial.

*Ibid., 226.

Ibid., 227.

Ibid., 231.

Ibid., 311.