Depicting devastation
- 27 January 2025
As Geoff Park states in the Introduction to his book, Ngā Uruora, p. 13. "With no evidence of the forest's trees, ferns and birds, there can be none of the signal from the wild that might one day predispose their inhabitants to walk more lightly on this part of the planet." I've been struggling with how I depict the loss (and the care and hope) in my work.
This edition of Art New Zealand magazine contained a trio of articles touching on this subject of artists documenting the deforestation of New Zealand.
The Passing of the Forest by Richard Wolfe
p102
"NZ's natural environment remained relatively undisturbed for some 23 million years. But that all changed with the arrival of Māori ancestors from East Polynesia. At that stage most of the land was covered in forest, but those early settlers burned off large areas to flush out game birds such as moa.."
"The process continued with the next wave of settlers. In 1840.. At the beginning of European settlement approximately 53 percent of the country was bush clad, but from the 1870s much of it was converted to pasture... a blitzed landscape of stumps and blackened logs.".
"... profusion of entangled branches, hanging supplejacks, creepers and rampant parasites..."
"Immense trees clothed with lichens of many colors all hanging around their stems like grey beards & all looking very weird..."
p. 103
There were voices calling for care and consideration...
"growing anxiety regarding the consequences of deforestation. In 1877 the New Zealand Herald referred to 'climatic alterations' being threatened by 'the wholesale, and, in many cases, wasteful removal of timber ..."
"It was also pointed out, in 1888, that an awareness of forests as 'regulators of climate' was hardly new, and in fact dated back several centuries, at least."
".. in just one decade, from 1890 to 1900, 27 percent of New Zealand's existing forest (or 13 per cent of the total land area) was cleared, while the number of farms increased eightfold, from around 10,000 in 1871 to more than 80,000 in 1921."
"The latter half of the 1890s saw continuing agitation against what was seen as the ruthless destruction of timber.. The Poverty Bay Herald .... resulting in vast acreages of fine timber being levelled to the ground..."
p. 105
In 1911 the many 'indirect injuries' caused by the destruction of forests were listed by the Auckland Star as 'the evils produced by the loss of valuable soil, the denudation and erosion of hillsides, the consequent silting up of rivers and harbours, and the recurrence of disastrous floods'."
This article also mentions the poem by William Pember Reeves, a line of which that I have used as my research proposal title: 'The Passing of the Forest'. ".. described as 'a poem of tender regret' and a 'protest against the too destructive agency of the axe and fire'. [ https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/webarchive/20210104000423/http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-reelong-t1-back-d2.html ]
p.106
"... beyond pure symbolism, this forest remnant (the dead tree) can now also be seen as a grim harbinger, of the consequences of the continuing degradation and loss of forests..."
Artists mentioned/work depicted:
Nicholas Chevalier 'Pigeon Bay Creek, Banks Peninsula, NZ' 1867 - impenetrable bush, as yet untouched by humans.
John Barr Clark Hoyte 'Akaroa Harbour' c 1875 - first taming of the land, stumps
William Watkins 'Akaroa' 1876 - first taming of the land, stumps
Jenny Wimperis 'Untitled (New Zealand Bush)' 1883 - impenetrable bush, as yet untouched by humans.
George Ernest Pruden 'Early Colonial Farm Clear, Mt Egmont in the background' 1909 - consequences of bush-burn technique
Margaret Stoddart 'Bush Fire, Paraparaumu' c 1908 - consequences of bush-burn technique
An article mentioned in the Bibliography:
"... artists of the nineteen-thirties and 'forties were responsive to this particular subject. Painters as diverse as Gordon Walters, Rita Angus and Russell Clark made works featuring dead trees: as did John Holmwood and Mervyn Taylor, to mention only the better-known and most significant."
"To begin with, it is important to realize that whole forests of native trees were being destroyed by the axe and by fire in the process of clearing the land for agriculture or sheep farming."
Days of Labour, Days of Rest by David Eggleton
Robert Scott's Recover the Land
p 74
A Case and a Camera by Gregory O'Brien
Mark Smith & Felicity Jones, A Cultivated Wilderness
p. 95