William Fox - Painter and Premier

William Fox - Painter and Premier

Born in England in 1812, William Fox emigrated to New Zealand in 1842, aged 30. A follower of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the founder of the New Zealand Company, Fox viewed colonisation as one of the great adventures and opportunities of the 19th century.

Portraits of William Fox – Timeframes website

In 1843, Fox became the New Zealand Company agent in Nelson. The New Zealand Company obtained land in New Zealand for British investors, and arranged passage for immigrants to settle in New Zealand and work the land. Fox's earliest surviving paintings date from 1843, when he and three companions travelled into the Wairarapa, looking for land that would be suitable for cultivation.

A vigorous man, Fox made numerous trips throughout New Zealand, inspecting land for settlement. In 1845 he travelled through the country north of the mouth of the Wairau River; in 1846 he explored the Buller Gorge, and also visited Banks Peninsula and Otago.

See Fox's paintings from the Buller Gorge – Timeframes website

Photography did not become widespread in New Zealand until the 1860s and 1870s. Instead, explorers and surveyors included sketches and watercolours with their reports. In the 8 years he worked for the New Zealand Company, Fox often enclosed sketches with his written accounts, describing the land he had seen.

See watercolours Fox sent to the New Zealand Company – Timeframes website

Art was mostly a private activity for Fox, and the works that he sent to the New Zealand Company were rarely published. The Company treated the sketches more as information than art, and tended not to use them as advertising material (unlike the work of other artists, such as Charles Heaphy).

Fox officially began his political life in 1855, when he was elected to represent Wanganui in the House of Representatives. His career in politics lasted for over 25 tumultuous years, including four terms as Premier, until he was defeated in the 1881 general election. Following his retirement he took up the temperance cause, and aged 80 he climbed Mt Taranaki to demonstrate the benefits of a temperate lifestyle.

See Fox's depictions of Mt Taranaki – Timeframes website

Fox continued to paint throughout his time in government and well into his retirement. He died in Auckland in 1893. As art historian Jill Trevelyan has noted, "Fox's art represents the private vision of a complex 19th-century man, whose image of an ideal New Zealand sustained him throughout a long and turbulent career in the colony."¹

Biography of William Fox – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography website

¹ Picturing Paradise: the colonial watercolours of William Fox, from the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library and Hocken Library, by Jill Trevelyan, 2000.

Permission of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image

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