Jane Austen’s Kiwi Connections

Canterbury Connection

What does Jane Austen have to do with Canterbury Museum?

Canterbury Museum is linked to the author of Pride and Prejudice and many other classics through two talented sisters, the English artists Gertrude Demain Hammond (1862–1952) and Christiana Demain Hammond (1860–1900).

Often it's the stories that wind around our Museum objects that make them extraordinary. This skillful and stunning portrait of Christiana, painted by Gertrude, is one of those objects that is much more than what you see at first glance.

It is the portrait of a sister, an illustrator, an artist, a woman in a man’s world, someone lost too soon. Gertrude painted it in 1899 after her marriage to Henry McMurdie. Christiana, a bridesmaid at the wedding, is pictured wearing her bridesmaid’s dress.

Christiana and Gertrude, along with their brother Percy, were talented artists. Christiana was the eldest, born 6 August 1860 in Camberwell, London. Gertrude was born in 1862 and Percy in 1865. The two sisters studied at the Lambeth School of Art.

Both were recognised as promising artists and awarded 3-year scholarships to the Royal Academy Schools in London where they were instructed in life drawing and watercolour. Recognition came again and Gertrude gained a further 3-year scholarship. However, Christiana was in declining health and could not continue her study.

Gertrude and Christiana went on to become well-known and prolific illustrators. Gertrude’s work appeared in a range of London journals, and in the literary works of Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

Christiana’s pen illustrations featured in, among other publications, editions of Jane Austen’s work: Emma (1898), Sense and Sensibility (1899) and Pride and Prejudice (1900). Working in a predominately male-dominated field, the sisters typically signed their names as G Demain Hammond and Chris Demain Hammond to hide their gender and to enhance their opportunities.

Gertrude continues

Christiana died in 1900, aged just 39. Gertrude continued as a practising artist. Her work was included in The Yellow Book, a controversial and fashionable London magazine of art, poetry and short stories.

The publication gave art and literature equal status and championed the idea that they should be free of the strict moral constraints of Victorian society. The Yellow Book’s name comes from the colour of its covers, inspired by the way controversial French novels were presented in at the time.

Gertrude was also recognised for her achievements in watercolour. She was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1896 and also exhibited with the Royal Academy.

In 1906 she sent works to Christchurch, to be included in the New Zealand International Exhibition.

The portrait and memoriam booklet were among a large number of items gifted to Canterbury Museum in the 1950s and 60s from the collection of Rev Arthur Stanley Moffatt and his wife Ethel Jane Moffatt.

Moffatt family descendants recently rediscovered, in their family collection, Christiana’s original pen and ink illustrations for Sense and Sensibility in 1899. These pen sketches have now found a permanent home at Jane Austen’s House, a museum in the cottage in Chawton, United Kingdom where Austen wrote her novels.

There has been much wonder at how such significant original illustrations, beloved by Austen fans the globe over, came to be in family archives in New Zealand. A pencil inscription inside the front cover of the Chris Hammond Memoriam booklet in Canterbury Museum’s collection may give a clue. The inscription reads “For Dick from Gertrude McMurdie, Worthing – June 1935”. Dick was the informal name of Rev Arthur Stanley Moffatt, the husband of the donor of the portrait and booklet to Canterbury Museum.

How Moffatt came to receive the booklet directly from Gertrude along with the watercolour of Christiana is as-yet unknown. And why Gertrude would wish to pass her personal collection of very intimate items relating to her sister to him is a subject for further investigation.

These family objects speak of early European settler life, but perhaps there are more amazing discoveries and connections to be made.

By Associate Curator Human History Frances Husband
2 February 2023