PROVENANCE:

Wilkie Family Collection

The Wilkie Collection of watercolours by Sir William Fox was deposited on loan to the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1964 by Mr & Mrs J C Wilkie. The collection consisted of some three hundred and fifty paintings of which one hundred featured historic New Zealand subject matter.

The Wilkie's lived and farmed at Ohingaiti, not far from Westoe, Sir William and Sarah Fox's station in the Rangitikei.
William Fox arrived in Wellington in 1842 and become editor of New Zealand Gazette and Britannia Spectator, before be appointed Resident Agent at Nelson for the New Zealand Company in 1843. He subsequently played a leading part in politics and held Office of Premier on four occasions. He was knighted in 1879. In his early years in New Zealand Fox carried out much exploration in the Wairarapa and in the South Island.

Fox's greatest contribution to New Zealand history after the struggle for self-government in the 1850s was his work in Taranaki in the early 1880s as a member of the West Coast Commission, which consisted of Francis Dillon Bell and himself. A third commissioner, Hone Mohi Tawhai, declined to serve when he heard that his colleagues were to be Fox and Bell. No doubt he questioned the propriety of their appointments. The commission was charged with the duty of inquiring into the numerous promises and engagements allegedly made by successive government officials to the Taranaki Maori, and into all the disputed land claims in that province.

Fox Glacier was named to commemorate Fox's visit to the region as Prime Minister of New Zealand in 1872. The Wairarapa town of Foxton, founded in 1885, was also named after him.

William and Sarah Fox left New Zealand for England in 1852 and spent several months travelling through Canada, the United States and Cuba on their return. Fox documented this trip in an impressive series of watercolours. Horseshoe Fall, Niagara, 1852 from Goat Island, Yosemite Falls & North Dome, Washington Column are watercolours executed on those travels and are on the market for the first time since then.

In his later years Fox continued to undertake considerable physical exercise, climbing Mount Taranaki in 1892, aged 80. He died in Auckland in 1893.