DOI: 10.3897/tuhinga.37.189893

Authors: Rosa Cachemaille

Abstract: In 1971, Colin McCahon moved into his studio at Muriwai and devoted himself to painting full-time. Previously, the financial precarity of making art had required him to undertake paid work alongside his painting practice. Correspondence between McCahon and his Wellington dealer, and friend, Peter McLeavey, provides unique details of this transitional period in McCahon’s practice in 1971, particularly McCahon’s careful attention to the exciting environmental conditions just outside his Muriwai studio: rain, sunshine, fertile land and turbulent weather. These conditions distracted McCahon from painting. Drawing on McCahon and McLeavey’s correspondence, this article highlights, upon cessation of paid work in 1971, the level of discomfort McCahon experienced from his desire to fill his newly free days with activities other than painting. McCahon struggled to identify whether distractions such as gardening and observational work were valuable and necessary to his painting process, which his 1971 exhibition View from the Top of the Cliff: An Exhibition of Watercolours by Colin McCahon indicates, or an early sign he was losing motivation. Although scholars have previously emphasised the difficulty of McCahon's working conditions prior to 1971, McCahon evidently could invoke restrictions and struggle over his painting process anywhere, at any time.

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DOI: 10.3897/tuhinga.36.166001

Authors: Victoria Munn

Abstract: This article explores the summer that New Zealand artists Dorothy K. Richmond and Frances Hodgkins spent in the Dutch artist colony of Rijsoord in 1903. Drawing on visual and archival evidence, it positions “Wilhelmina”, an oil painting recently acquired by Te Papa, as a product of Richmond’s stay in Rijsoord and sheds light on the social, cultural and artistic context in which it was painted. With reference to traditional Dutch dress, I interpret the painting as evidence of Richmond’s engagement with South Holland culture and daily village life. Moreover, by highlighting connections in composition and subject matter between “Wilhelmina” and select works by Frances Hodgkins, I argue that “Wilhelmina” visualises the fruitful artistic cross-pollination between Richmond and Hodgkins in the early years of the twentieth century.

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DOI: 10.3897/tuhinga.35.127170

Authors: Peter Stupples

Abstract: The National Gallery of New Zealand appointed two representatives in London from the 1950s to the 1970s, of which the second was Mary Chamot. She recommended and purchased works of British and European art that enriched to collection that became part of The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. This paper is both a history and an appreciation of the contribution Chamot made to that collection.

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DOI: 10.3897/tuhinga.34.106803

Authors: Annika Sippel

Abstract: Francis Henry Dumville Smythe (1873–1966), a humble clergyman from England, spent a lifetime amassing his private collection of British watercolours. During the 1950s, he decided to gift the bulk of them to two art institutions in New Zealand – Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the National Art Gallery in Wellington. They were welcomed with open arms and celebrated as “the finest collection of water colour pictures in the Southern Hemisphere.” However, they soon fell out of favour as shifting aesthetic tastes and calls for a new national identity dominated the art scene in New Zealand during the latter half of the twentieth century. This paper will examine Smythe’s collecting habits and tastes in art, as well as the formation, gifting and reception of the collection in Wellington and Dunedin. It is based on two chapters from the author’s PhD thesis “A Matter of Taste: The Fate of the Archdeacon Smythe Collection of British Watercolours in New Zealand” (2021).

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DOI: 10.3897/tuhinga.33.82337

Authors: Moira White

Abstract: Over 1949–1951 the Association of Friends of the Otago Museum purchased approximately 100 pieces of contemporary ceramic work described by them at the time as representing the best current English potters – work they felt would have a lasting value. Muriel Rose, the Crafts and Industrial Design Officer at the British Council, made the selection on their behalf and arranged transport. The group included work from Bernard Leach, the Leach Pottery, Michael Cardew, Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie, Steven Sykes, Henry Hammond and Margaret Leach, as well as Wetheriggs Pottery and examples of work from commercial factories, particularly Wedgwood, who employed highly regarded graphic artists. In 1951, HD Skinner suggested to Robert Falla, director of the Dominion Museum, that they share this group. This paper examines the acquisition as a whole, its background, and the logistics of the division between the two institutions.

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DOI: 10.3897/tuhinga.33.82325

Authors: Peter Stupples

Abstract: Gordon Crook (1921–2011) became a significant Wellington artist after his arrival in Aotearoa, New Zealand in 1972. He produced tapestries, prints and banners. In the 1980s, he turned from celebratory public works to more introverted, private imagery, particularly after acquiring a copy of Muriel Gardiner’s The Wolf-Man and Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s analysis of Sergei Pankeev (The Wolf-Man), Crook discovered a set of ideas that enabled him to explore his own infantile neurosis, the result of childhood traumas and his psycho-sexual difficulties in human relationships. The result was a major series of works (1990–91) embracing tapestries and black-and-white prints, two sets of which are in the collection of Te Papa. This paper is based upon Crook’s correspondence over the period of the development of his turn towards more introverted subject matter, as well as a close study of the relationship of Crook’s images to the text of Gardiner’s book.

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