Kennett Watkins

Charles Henry Kennett Watkins was born in Ootacamund, India to Major John Watkins of the Indian Army. After attending Wellington College and studying in Switzerland and France, Kennett immigrated to New Zealand at the age of twenty-seven where he first found work as a photographer before teaching in Russell. In 1876 he moved to Auckland where he found work as an art teacher, becoming the first and only headmaster of the Auckland Free School of Art. The same year, he married Clara Eliza Alice Davis at Kerikeri and had four children. His 1912 painting 'The legend of the voyage to New Zealand', a depiction of the arrival of the 'Great Fleet' of migration canoes in 1350, played a role in mythologising the arrival of Māori in New Zealand. It was gifted to the Auckland Art Gallery in 1913. Kennett retired in 1915 and settled in the East Cape and later in Dannevirke. In 1931, he moved to Mercury Bay. He continued to paint in his retirement and died on 31 July 1933 in Mercury Bay. Survived by his wife and three children, he was buried at Whitianga Public Cemetery.