Native Barns and Huts at Akaroa, Banks' Peninsula, 1845
1865
Medium
Etching with drypoint and burnishing on grayish ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 14 × 24.3 cm (5 9/16 × 9 5/8 in.); Plate: 14 × 24.3 cm (5 9/16 × 9 5/8 in.); Sheet: 21.6 × 33.3 cm (8 9/16 × 13 1/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
74049
Art Historical Context
Charles Meryon’s *Native Barns and H at Akaroa,’ Peninsula, 184* (1865) offers a rare glimpse into the’s early travels beyond his famed Parisian scenes. A French etcher renowned for his meticulous urban landscapes, Meryon sketched these traditional Māori structures—simple barns and thatched huts—during a naval visit to New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula in 184. Created two decades later, the work captures a moment of early European-Māori encounter in the South Island’s Akaroa region, a site of brief French settlement ambitions amid British colonial expansion. Masterfully executed in etching with d...
About the Artist
Charles Meryon · 1821–1868
Charles Meryon, born on November 23, 1821, in Paris, was the illegitimate son of English physician Dr. Charles Lewis Meryon and dancer Pierre-Narcisse Chaspoux (stage name Narcisse Gentil) at the Paris Opéra. His half-sister Fanny, from his mother's prior relationship with Viscount Lowther, remained in contact after their mother's death in 1838. Raised partly outside Paris before attending Pension...