Captain Sharp’s Residence

Captain Charles Kingsford Sharp (1806–80) was a ship’s captain, Wellington Harbourmaster, and Customs Officer at Whanganui. He arrived in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington in 1841 aboard the Mandarin, having served in the British Army in India. He owned one of the first houses on The Terrace. It was situated near where Salamanca Road now joins the Terrace, and its gardens extended from Mount Street to Everton Terrace.

Charles Moore Igglesden was his nephew. He was born at Mumbai (then Bombay), where his father was a commander in the East India Company’s navy. He was partly educated in Europe, but was forced to return to England by the revolutions of 1848. He studied drawing at the North London School of Design and in the antique class of the Royal Academy, and pursued a career as an engineer and surveyor.

In 1855, he emigrated to Aotearoa, initially staying with Captain Sharpe. On 2 December 1868, he was commissioned a Lieutenant in the No. 1 Company of the Wellington Militia. He was employed by the New Zealand Survey Department for 37 years, serving as Town Surveyor and Resident Engineer in Lyttelton, and later working in Whakatū Nelson. On his retirement in 1903, he moved to Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

There is an unusual amount of domestic detail in this watercolour. Mrs Sharp is sitting on the verandah talking to a begging dog, ‘Old John’ the gardener sharpens a scythe, and Captain Sharp’s pet monkey, brought from India, eats an apple. The artist’s eye for architectural detail is evident in the treatment of the drainage arrangements; guttering diverts rainwater off the roof into a large wooden barrel.

In 1912, many of Igglesden’s paintings and a collection of over 200 photographs of early Wellington buildings were lost in a house fire. A second watercolour, showing the garden in front of Captain Sharp’s house and dated December 1868, is in the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa (C-119-022).