Nicholas Chevalier was a professional, itinerant artist, born in St Petersburg, who studied in Munich and London, exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1852. He arrived in Melbourne in 1854 and became part of a circle of intellectuals, working as an illustrator for the Victoria Illustrated.
Read MoreHe arrived in New Zealand in 1865 and was employed by the Otago Provincial Council to complete a series of sketches and paintings of the region. Similarly, the Canterbury Provincial Council paid him £200 to document Westland and Canterbury with 200 works displayed in the Christchurch Town Hall in 1866. His time in New Zealand in 1865 coincided with the opening of the Otira Gorge between Canterbury and the West Coast and the popular sentiment and topographical accuracy of his romantic watercolours remain important as an historical record of developing colonial infrastructures.
Chevalier returned to England in 1870. He has work in the Museum of New Zealand - Te Papa Tongarewa, in Wellington, New Zealand.
