In the Sounds

John Gully's watercolor views of Fiordland's sounds — the dramatic fjords of the South Island's southwestern coast — document one of the world's most spectacular and least-visited landscapes. The sounds (Milford, Doubtful, and others) were accessible only by sea or on foot through difficult terrain, and Gully's paintings provided the first widely available visual documentation of their extraordinary combination of vertical cliff faces, dark water, and lush rainforest. His images shaped New Zealand's understanding of its own wilderness heritage.

The fjord environment requires Gully to handle the interaction of water, cliff, and sky in a compressed vertical space — the sound's dramatic scale conveyed through the relationship between towering rock walls and the water below. His watercolor washes capture the dark, deep quality of fiord water and the varying qualities of light within the enclosed space of the fjord. Reflections of the cliff faces in the still water double their height within the composition.