Tinakori Road, Wellington

The first houses in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington lined the foreshore but gradually the bush and scrub-covered hills of what is now The Terrace were cleared. Kelburn and Karori remained a wilderness where settlers went at times to cut out large trees for timber. Tinakori Road, surrounded by cleared land in 1849, was barely settled; however, its use as a thoroughfare is evident.

Maplestone was probably commissioned by the New Zealand Company to do this work together with others of Taranaki, Nelson and Wellington, held by the Turnbull Library and published by them as very popular prints. There is a suggestion that the English painter might not have come to New Zealand at all but used drawings by Samuel Charles Brees and Charles Hursthouse as the basis for his signed paintings.

When this work was auctioned in 1986, the catalogue noted that the view was ‘taken from the top of Hawkstone Street looking up the road towards Karori. The house in the mid to right is Levins and the villa seen above is Mr Holroyd’s; Mr Dorset’s house is higher up the range of hills.’