Spring Catalogue Exhibition 2009
Nicholas Chevalier
Leslie Hills Station, Canterbury, 1866
watercolour on paper, 255 x 530mm
signed and dated lower left: N Chevalier 1866
Provenance: Christies South Kensington, London, Lot 175 Art Auction, May 1989. Estate of Sir James Fletcher. Private Collection Auckland.
Nicholas Chevalier was born into nobility in Russia in 1828. He left Russia in 1845 to study painting and architecture in Lausanne, Switzerland and in Munich, Germany. He spent some time in London as an illustrator and studied painting further in Rome before travelling to Australia in 1854.
An exhibition of Victorian artists was hosted at the newly founded National Gallery of Victoria in 1864 and the government undertook to purchase the 'best picture' for which they chose Chevalier's oil painting The Buffalo Ranges (1864). This became the first work painted in Australia to be included in the Melbourne collection and gave Chevalier considerable reputation in Australasia and Britain.
Following his success in Australia, Chevalier was employed by the Otago and Canterbury City Councils to make sketches of the regions. Chevalier travelled extensively throughout New Zealand over a period of eight months and created a significant of number of works of which Leslie Hills Station, Canterbury (1866) is a fine example. The station depicted is identified as one of the high country pastoral properties illustrated on his return to Christchurch towards the end of this trip.
The prosperity of the farm, run by George Rutherford who had purchased the land in 1858, is indicated in the depiction of the homestead buildings. It is likely that the buildings would have recently replaced cob or slab huts typical of this era and represent of the changes in farming practices around this period in New Zealand. A figure can be seen training horses in the distance, also signifying the affluence of the station. AJ
