Right from the beginning of European settlement, beautiful Akaroa has been popular with artists.
For example, Nicholas Chevalier and John Barr Clark Hoyte visited in 1866 and 1875, and painted the harbour and hills.
But there was an artist who lived there, self-taught painter William Watkins who arrived in Akaora as a boy, with his family, in 1850.
William was interested in art, as a boy, but there was no art school in Akaroa, or nearby Christchurch, until the Canterbury College School of Art opened in Christchurch in 1882.
By that time, William was already painting. He had learned a little from a Lyttleton draughtsman, Edmund Norman in the 1850s. And then he probably learned more from his elder brother, Stephen, who had studied art in London and arrived in Akaroa in 1860.
But at the encouragement of the prominent scientist, Julius von Haast, William went to Melbourne, in Australia, in 1876, to study art in the Victorian Academy of Fine Arts.
Back in Akaroa in 1878, William set up as a professional artist and for the next 18 years painted pictures that closely copied nature, were balanced and interesting.
Notes: This article thanks to P Vangioni, Christchurch Art Gallery curator