Artist unknown :Manning Bros camp, Strathmore. [ca 1890]

One of two watercolours of the quarters of the Mannings in their road clearing camp close to Strathmore, near Stratford, by an unknown English artist working in the area at the time.

Watercolour shows a canvas tent with a ridgepole and a slab chimney from which smoke is rising. There are two rain barrels beside the tent. Three men are in the foreground: one carries buckets, one stands talking to a third man who sits beside a tree stump smoking a pipe. Two other men work at the far right beside the tent; they may be sawing a log seen end-on, or they may be turning a metal drum on a stand.

Accompanied by a letter to a previous owner, Mr Arrowsmith, in 1982, from historian Phyllis Johnston, regarding the Manning family in the Stratford area.

See Taranaki herald, 17 September 1895, page 2, for a report of a fatality. Joseph Manning a 48-year-old father of eight was killed by a falling tree whilst engaged at Government road clearing on the Brewer Road near Stratford. Manning had worked on the government road project and on his own section at Terrace End Palmerston North, alternately.

Inscriptions: Recto - bottom left - [Title]

Quantity: 1 watercolour(s).

Physical Description: Watercolour and Chinese white, 252 x 172 mm.

Provenance: Formerly owned in the early 1980s by a Mr Arrowsmith

Processing information: Deframed by the Library.

Alternative form available: Scanned from original