This panoramic view of Wellington Harbour in 1842 is made with inlaid native woods and is probably derived from the early watercolour views of Charles Heaphy (1815-1881), Resident Artist and Surveyor of the New Zealand Company. With British Naval Fleet vessels and merchant trading ships at anchor, and a number of settler-and-Maori figures in the foreground, it is the kind of view that was drawn to attract migrants to New Zealand. In the warm glow of New Zealand wood, the scene is even more impressive.

This work was presented by James Petherick, Jnr, apparently at the age of 16, in the Home Industry Branch of the major New Zealand Industrial Exhibition of 1885, the brainchild of politician Julius Vogel. It would have exemplified what Vogel described, somewhat effusively, as the achievement of ‘labour and industriousness alone.’