Hocken Legacy

The French Connection

The University of Otago's Hocken Collections has further benefitted from the generosity of a self-described “enthusiastic Francophile”.

Dr Roger Collins credits a high school French teacher in Timaru with igniting his passion for France and things French, and his abiding interest in Franco-New Zealand contacts.

Collins went on to study French at universities in New Zealand and France, and taught French and Art History at Otago for many years.

A prolific author of books and articles in French as well as English, his published works include a book, in French, on Louis Le Breton, who visited New Zealand with the French explorer Dumont d'Urville in 1840 and painted a famous scene of Otago Harbour, which the Hocken later acquired.

Kowhai. Coloured engraving. Published in J.C.Mordant de Launay & J.L.A. Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, Herbier général de L'amateur, Paris: Audot, volume 3, 1819. Given by E.A.G and R.D.J Collins, Christchurch in 2020, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago, Collins 197;

While teaching at Otago, Collins also edited a bilingual journal, Antipodes, devoted to the documentation and study of contacts between New Zealand and the French-speaking world.

The meticulous collector has donated much material to the Hocken over several decades. His most recent gift is an extensive collection of more than 1,000 prints, some previously on indefinite loan, related to the French exploration of New Zealand and the Pacific, dating from the 1770s to the 1880s.

“When I went to France for the first time in the early 1960s, I was soon captivated by early French publications with illustrations of New Zealand,” Collins explains. “Some of these were in published accounts of the voyages of exploration, some were in illustrated newspapers or magazines, and I just started accumulating this stuff from print dealers in Paris.”

Collins says that the much-expanded collection comprises printed pictures of New Zealand subjects made in France and copied from any source, whether French or foreign; and pictures printed in other countries by printmakers who adapted French images to their own local markets.

The diverse subjects embrace landscapes, plants and animals, portraits, voyages and encounters, customs and practices, costume and dress, and tools.

Collins says that most of the prints are founded on the collections of the natural historians and the portfolios of draftsmen and artists who visited New Zealand from the 1760s, notably those taking part in French naval expeditions to the Pacific.

He says that drawings either made on the spot, or later from specimens and artefacts taken back to France, were copied by lithographers and engravers, whose work most often appeared as book illustrations, but also as anything from pictorial wallpaper to children's board games.

Some of the items in the collection are single-sheet prints but most are leaves from books that had been taken apart.

“It is a fascinating collection and offers some very interesting opportunities for interpretation and further research, whether that is from an artistic or historical point of view, or from the cultural perspective of the people, activities and subjects depicted in the prints.”

Some of the prints have already been displayed at the Hocken, most recently as part of an exhibition earlier this year titled “Drift”, featuring recent Hocken art acquisitions and selected collection items.

Hocken Head Curator, Pictorial Collections, Robyn Notman, hopes that academics, students and other interested parties such as artists and curators, will make good use of the prints.

“It is a fascinating collection and offers some very interesting opportunities for interpretation and further research, whether that is from an artistic or historical point of view, or from the cultural perspective of the people, activities and subjects depicted in the prints.”

She adds that the big job of helping to identify and catalogue the most recent prints could be a great task for Humanities interns, especially senior Māori or Pasifika students.

Collins has been very generous to the Hocken over the years. The retired academic previously donated collections of books he amassed relating to the French and New Zealand, including histories and biographies of French people in New Zealand, French literature set in New Zealand, New Zealand literature set in France, and New Zealand novels translated into French.

Terres Australes, Pirogue de guerre de la N elle Zélande. Coloured engraving. Given by E.A.G and R.D.J Collins, Christchurch in 2020, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago, Collins 15.
Photos: Sharron Bennett

He has additionally donated his collection of text books used for teaching French in New Zealand.

While French is the obvious common connection between these donations, one eclectic Hocken donation has nothing to do with France or the French.

It comprises a collection of books that United Kingdom publishers opted to have printed in New Zealand during the Second World War, rather than printed in the United Kingdom and shipped to New Zealand, because of the wartime threat to shipping.

The Collins Collection, as it's named, ranges from a book of children's verses, Now we are Six, by A. A. Milne; to a detective novel, Towards Zero, by Agatha Christie.

Collins' work has been acknowledged by the Fédération des Alliances Françaises de Nouvelle-Zélande, which awarded him the John Dunmore Medal in 1987. The medal recognises outstanding contributions to knowledge and understanding of the part played by the French people or French language in the development of world culture, particularly in the Pacific region.

Appropriately, Collins – who was a founding committee member of the Friends of the Hocken in 1991 – was made an Honorary Hocken Fellow in 2007.

IAN DOUGHERTY