Botanical artist Emily Cumming Harris was one of New Zealand’s first professional woman painters. She came to New Plymouth as a child with her family on the ship William Bryan in 1841 and was taught to paint by her father, draughtsman Edwin Harris, and encouraged by landscape painter John Gully. The family left New Plymouth in 1860 during the Taranaki Wars to live in Nelson but maintained friendships and family connections in Taranaki.
Emily went to Australia to study art for several years, then returned and joined her two sisters, Frances and Ellen, teaching at a small private school in Nelson.
During the 1880s Emily was involved in several exhibitions. Some of her work was done on screens, tables and drapes but although the reviews were favourable, sales of her work were not – a sale of her paintings in New Plymouth in 1890 barely covered costs. It was in the hope of making a reasonable profit that, in 1890, she published three slim volumes of hand-coloured lithographs: New Zealand Ferns, New Zealand Flowers and New Zealand Berries.
Many of her botanical works are watercolours but in later life she sometimes worked with oils, and painted birds, still lifes and landscapes as well as plants and flowers.
Emily Harris never married and continued to live and work in Nelson until her death at the age of 88 on 5 August 1925.
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