Port Chalmers

This first edition, large chromolithograph is from Charles Decimus Barraud & W. T. L. Travers’s New Zealand: Graphic and Descriptive. The work was published in London by Sampson Low Marston in 1877. The work was considered one of the finest color plate books dealing with New Zealand.

“From his youth Barraud had displayed artistic talent, and for the first 26 years of his life in New Zealand he travelled widely in his spare time over a large area of the North and South Islands, sketching in the various provinces, and recording his impressions of the attractions of New Zealand. Many of these sketches he worked up to a larger scale, and the climax of this activity came in 1875 when he decided to sail to England to take advice on the publication of his work. This was published in 1877 under the title New Zealand, Graphic and Descriptive, his publishers being Samson, Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, the lithographer being C. F. Kell, while the descriptive material was edited by W. T. L. Travers. The book contained 24 full-page colour lithographs of landscapes and numerous other plain lithographs and woodcuts dealing with aspects of native life in New Zealand. Several of the lithographs are of considerable historic interest, particularly that portraying the Pink and White Terraces which were destroyed in the Tarawera eruption.” (Encyclopaedia of New Zealand)

Charles Decimus Barraud (1822-1897) was a New Zealand pharmacist and artist. William Thomas Locke Travers (1819-1903), the editor, was a New Zealand worthy and was a founder and life governor of the New Zealand Institute.