Orakei Korako on the Waikato

Steam rises gently from the earth in this 1890 painting by Charles Blomfield, marking the hot springs and geysers of Orakei Korako, a geothermal valley beside the Waikato River in New Zealand. A small Māori settlement anchors the foreground, its thatched huts sheltering a few figures who rest in the shade near the buildings. Beyond them the valley stretches wide and open, with the river winding through rolling hills toward pale blue mountains that dissolve into the haze on the horizon.

Blomfield was born in England and settled in New Zealand, where he devoted much of his life to painting the country's landscapes, particularly its volcanic and steaming terrain. He is most closely tied to the Pink and White Terraces, the famous silica formations swept away by the 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera. Because he recorded places that later changed or disappeared entirely, his paintings carry a genuine historical weight beyond their beauty. This one keeps to the calm, careful landscape style common in his day, favoring an honest record of the scene over any grand flourish.

Paintings like this give us a quiet glimpse of nineteenth century New Zealand, a time when European settlers and Māori communities shared a country shaped by these extraordinary natural wonders.