Emily Cumming Harris

Emily Cumming Harris (28 March 1836 – 5 August 1925) was one of New Zealand's first professional women painters. She chiefly painted New Zealand plants and flowers and worked mainly in water colour. She was born in Plymouth, Devon, England in about 1837 but spent most of her life in Nelson, New Zealand.

Early life Harris was the second daughter of five children of Sarah Hill and her husband Edwin Harris. The Harris family emigrated from England on the "William Bryan", a ship of the Plymouth Company of New Zealand. They reached New Zealand on 31 March 1841.

Following the outbreak of the First Taranaki War in March 1860, Harris was sent to Hobart to study while her family moved to Nelson. After spending several years in Australia she returned to Nelson where she joined her sisters in running a small primary school and giving private lessons in music, dancing and drawing. In 1879 she exhibited at the Sydney International Exhibit where she was awarded a first degree of merit. She also exhibited at the 1880 - 1881 Melbourne International Exhibition. In January 1906 Harris held an exhibition of between 100 and 250 works in her studio in Nile Street in Nelson during carnival week. The works were on a larger scale then her early work and were in oil, rather than watercolour.

Unpublished work She completed a book entitled New Zealand Mountain Flowers in the 1890s which was never published. The Alexander Turnbull Library purchased the manuscript in London in 1970. Harris had hoped the book would be published in England by her cousin Lord Stuart Rendel and his wife Ellen, but after their deaths in 1913 and 1912 respectively, it seems the manuscript was returned to New Zealand unpublished.

Later life

Harris's professional artistic development and success was constrained by family obligations, straitened finances and the conventions of her time. However, in 1924 the Alexander Turnbull Library purchased 63 of her watercolours. She is buried at Wakapuaka cemetery in Nelson.

In 2017, Harris was selected as one of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's "150 women in 150 words", celebrating the contributions of women to knowledge in New Zealand.