Caroline Abraham

Caroline Abraham arrived in Auckland in August 1850 and is one of the few known female artists to have painted the growing colonial township during this early period. In coming to New Zealand, she accompanied her husband the Reverend Charles John Abraham who was appointed as principal and chaplain of St John’s College, later also becoming archdeacon of the Waitematā. He was an old friend of Bishop George Selwyn’s from his days at Eton. Caroline was also connected to the Selwyns as Sarah was her first cousin, with whom she was very close before the Selwyns departed for New Zealand in 1841.
The Abrahams married in January 1850, just months before their departure from England. There are numerous passing references to Caroline’s ill-health in their first two years in the country – these in fact relate to confinements and pregnancies lost before term. She was to have one surviving son, Charles Thomas (referred to as Charlie) born in 1857, when she was 48. Prior to marriage she expressed ‘I cannot be content merely to glide down the stream of life’ and applied herself wholly to supporting the missionary endeavour in New Zealand both in the home, but also in the running of the College.
Caroline deployed her talent as a watercolourist to record her surroundings in Auckland, and later when her husband was appointed Bishop of Wellington in 1858, depicted the environs of that district there also. She remained in New Zealand until 1867 when she returned to England to allow Charlie to attend Eton. Her husband soon followed, taking up a position in Lichfield, supporting Selwyn. In her early years in New Zealand, Abraham confessed to feeling ‘desolate in this far land’. Upon returning permanently to England, however, she reminisced about ‘my own bright land—the blue sky & sparking water wh. come to me when I shut eyes’: qualities very much evident in her watercolours of this country.