Humanities technician Cassandra Bahr has been working in the Collected Archives at Te Papa, cataloguing and rehousing papers from people connected to Te Papa’s collecting areas. Here, she highlights the archives of scientific illustrator and orchid specialist Bruce Irwin (1921–2012).
James Bruce Irwin was born in Whanganui in 1921. As a young man, he drew and collected orchids from Mt Taranaki. His career took him from New Plymouth, where he was a draughtsman for the Department of Lands and Survey, to Dunedin, where he worked in the art department of the Otago Medical School, and then to Tauranga, where he taught art at Tauranga Boys’ College alongside cultivating orchids.
Throughout his life he drew botanical illustrations, which were published in Volume II of the Flora of New Zealand (1970), The Oxford Book of New Zealand Plants (1978), Vegetation of Egmont National Park (1986), The New Zealand Orchids: Natural History and Cultivation (1990), and Bruce Irwin’s drawings of New Zealand orchids (2007).
The Oxford Book of New Zealand Plants
Botanist Lucy Moore first saw Bruce Irwin’s watercolours of New Zealand orchids at a meeting of the Wellington Botanical Society. A decade later, she invited Irwin to illustrate the Flora of New Zealand book. Their collaboration continued with the Oxford Book of New Zealand Plants, during which Irwin worked for 11.5 years on the illustrations.
He was a perfectionist and often drew the same plant multiple times, always with exquisite detail. To accurately represent the plants, Irwin had to first find a specimen – he spent a whole day looking for Tillaea multicaulis.
The book was well-received, especially his drawings. In fact, Irwin was dissatisfied that reviews focused on his work to the exclusion of Lucy Moore’s text, writing that most reviews “concentrated on the illustrations. They failed to appreciate the brilliance of the text. Not a single unnecessary word, yet skillfully filled in every gap in the illustrations. In [a] very real sense, Lucy completed those illustrations for me” (from CA001370/001/0009).
Orchids
Irwin maintained an interest in orchids throughout his life. When he was in his early twenties, he drew many illustrations of orchids, mostly from around Taranaki. He was also keen on growing orchids and was a long-time member of the NZ Orchid Society.
Here are some of my favourite illustrations, including one of the rare Pterostylis micromega, which has recently been successfully propagated by a team that included Te Papa staff.
Further reading
View more of Irwin’s botanical watercolours on Collections Online
