Artist: Charles Henry Kennett Watkins
Date: 1888
Size: 17 x 7 cm
Museum: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (Auckland, New Zealand)
Technique: Oil On Canvas
A phantom canoe was sighted on Lake Tarawera just days before the eruption of Mount Tarawera in June 1886. The Māori guides and tourists who witnessed it told of a waka ‘being vigorously paddled’ towards the mountain. Hailed by the guides, the crew gave no response and then vanished. The apparition was seen as a sign of imminent death and disaster.Kennett Watkins’s interpretation, two years after the event, dramatically enriches the narrative. While eyewitness accounts varied in their detail, they all claimed that the event occurred during the day. Watkins turns it into a spectral vision at night, the mountain ominously surrounded by cloud and silhouetted by the moon. A zigzag of lightning cuts through the sky, adding to the sense of danger. The sole witness sits in his canoe in the shadows.See more detail about this artwork
Artist |
|
|---|---|
Download |
|
Permissions |
Free for non commercial use. See below. |
 |
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. However - you may not use this image for commercial purposes and you may not alter the image or remove the watermark. This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.
|
Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may
not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the
