Charles Decimus Barraud

Port Chalmers: View from the environs towards Port Chalmers, Kamau Tauru, Goat Island and the Otago Peninsula.

Born in Surrey in 1822, Charles Decimus Barraud emigrated to New Zealand shortly after his marriage in 1849 and set up business as a chemist in Wellington; later becoming the first president of the New Zealand Pharmacy Board. Barraud not only made contributions to Science in New Zealand but also to the Arts.
In his youth Barraud had displayed artistic talent and soon gained recognition in New Zealand for his landscapes and portraits. For more than two decades Barraud travelled widely over a large area of the North and South Islands, sketching his impressions of the various provinces. From these field sketches he worked up larger paintings, taking his portfolio to London to be published in 1877 as New Zealand, Graphic and Descriptive.
The first large scale work of its kind on New Zealand, Barraud’s lithographs simultaneously record features forever lost, such as the Pink and White Terraces destroyed in the eruption of Mount Tarawera, and vistas that look little changed today. Barraud went on to become a founding member of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, and its first president, as well as a member of the Otago Art Society devoting his time to mentoring up and coming artists.