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3 Abbey Street
Newton
Auckland
PO Box 68 345
Newton
Auckland 1145
Telephone: +64 9 354 4646
Freephone: 0 800 80 60 01
Facsimile: +64 9 354 4645
info@artandobject.co.nz
www.artandobject.co.nz
Previous spread:
Lots, clockwise from top left: 515
(map), 521, 315, 313, 513, 507,
512, 510, 514, 518, 522, 520, 516,
519, 517
Rear cover:
Lot 11
Arthur Thomas Pycroft
(1875–1971)
Arthur Pycroft was the “essential gentleman amateur”.
Like many other lay enthusiasts, he made considerable
contributions as a naturalist, scholar, historian and
conservationist.
He was educated at the Church of England Grammar
School in Parnell, Auckland’s first grammar school, where his
father Henry Thomas Pycroft a Greek and Hebrew scholar
was the headmaster between 1883 and 1886. The family
lived in the headmaster’s residence now known as “Kinder
House”. He then went on to Auckland Grammar School.
On leaving school he joined the Auckland Institute in 1896, remaining a member
for 75 years, becoming President in 1935 and serving on the Council for over 40 years.
Throughout this time he collaborated as a respected colleague with New Zealand’s
foremost men of science, naturalists and museum directors of his era.
From an early age he developed a “hands on” approach to all his interests and
corresponded with other experts including Sir Walter Buller regarding his rediscovery
of the Little Black Shag and other species which were later included in Buller’s 1905
Supplement. New Zealand’s many off shore islands fascinated him and in the summer of
1903-04 he spent nearly six weeks on Taranga (Hen Island), the first of several visits.
He also visited Little Barrier in 1928, the Kermadecs with Guthrie Smith in 1929 and
in 1932 travelled on an expedition to Melanesia. The garden of his St Heliers home
hosted superb examples of the Poor Knight’s Lily (Xeronema) in addition to other rare
botanical species.
When Sir Robert Falla named a newly discovered species of petrel (Pterodroma
pycrofti) it was in recognition of Arthur Pycroft’s long service to ornithology and his
organisation of the expedition to Hen Island where the birds had been discovered.
He was also a member of the “Moa Searching Committee” among whose
objectives were to seek evidence that moas of one species or another had been hunted by
the Polynesian invaders. The quest for Moa skeletons took him from Doubtless Bay to
the limestone caves of the King Country and Waikaremoana where first evidence was
found that a large pelican had once lived in New Zealand.
Another great interest lay in Auckland and Far North regions whose history and
development he studied closely for more than eight decades, an enthusiasm reflected in
the rarities in his collection.
Arthur Pycroft and his wife Minna, a recognised ornithological and botanical
artist in her own right spent four years in England in the late 1930s, a halcyon time for
Arthur who haunted antiquarian book shops in search of rare books.
The sheer breadth of the collection is a reflection of the depth of all his interests,
accentuated by an acutely sensitive and dedicated approach to acquisitions. The library
is rich in rare books, pamphlets, manuscripts and photographs with many of the more
notable items having a unique association with the personalities who helped shape early
New Zealand and Pacific history.
Art & Object is privileged to offer the Arthur Thomas Pycroft Collection.
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