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National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art Catalogue

Introduction

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Introduction

In any young country there is always the temptation to place undue emphasis on material rather than on cultural values. The stern struggle for existence in a new land and the strain of pioneering are far from favourable for an emergence of the Arts. Society requires a certain measure of stability before its culture can develop. In the case of New Zealand, the early period of colonisation had no sooner begun than the feverish gold-rushes in the South and the distressing Maori wars in the North provided disturbing social factors which completely changed preconceived ideas of colonisation. Still later in the century, the opening up and clearing of large areas of land for settlement, the rapid construction of roads and railways, the amazing impetus to exports through refrigeration, and the recurrent periods of prosperity and depression, produced conditions which necessarily focussed public attention on questions of utility rather than of culture. For this reason, a survey of one hundred years of New Zealand art becomes a faithful reflection of the national spirit and reveals unmistakably the social and political changes which transformed a struggling colony into a progressive dominion.

It must not be forgotten that when the first Europeans arrived in New Zealand, the country possessed in its Maori art a unique native culture which the impact of western civilisation was ultimately to destroy. The eighteenth century was rich in voyages of exploration to the South Seas and English and French navigators in particular vied with each other in charting the waters of the mysterious Pacific. In these expeditions artists had to play their part in recording the characteristics of the new scenes and peoples with whom they came in contact, and on their spasmodic visits to New Zealand they were inspired mainly by the desire to depict something of the charm and novelty of Maori life. Tasman, it is true, had paid a fleeting visit in 1642, when an unknown Dutch artistpage 8 had made some crude and rather fanciful drawings of the country and its inhabitants. But it was not until Parkinson, Hodges, and Webber, the artists who accompanied Cook on his three voyages, had had their sketches of Maori life published as engravings or coloured aquatints that the people of Europe were able to form some definite impression of the natives and their environment. Although these volumes were in the finest tradition of eighteenth century publishing, the illustrations failed to portray the Maori as a peculiar racial type and from an anthropological viewpoint were of little value.

Of much higher artistic merit was the work of the French artists who for the most part sketched in New Zealand early in the nineteenth century. Piron, the first to arrive, was a member of the expedition which searched for La Perouse, the ill-fated explorer. Although Piron's work is of little value, Lejeune and Chazal who visited New Zealand in 1824 in the corvette La Coquille under the command of Duperrey, drew a number of very interesting studies near the Bay of Islands, afterwards published as lithographs. De Sainson, who accompanied Dumont d'Urville in the Astrolabe in 1827, was a draughtsman of ability and his lithographs, published in The Voyage of the Astrolabe are very fine. In 1840, on d'Urville's second visit to New Zealand, the artist was Le Breton whose paintings of Otago Harbour and its whaling base are the earliest known. Although these visits were all of a transitory character and more of an historical than of an artistic value, they served to awaken the interest of many both in England and in France to the new land and its picturesque inhabitants.

The outstanding artist of this early period, however, was Augustus Earle who was trained for the career of an artist. Of a wandering disposition, Earle travelled extensively and in October, 1827, arrived at Hokianga, North Auckland, where a Wesleyan Mission was being established. As an artist Earle was unable to resist the attraction of the magnificent kauri forests and many of his best sketches, later lithographed, depict these subjects. The Maori, too, interested him greatly. It waspage 9the period when inter-tribal wars were being waged in all their savagery, and the musket, sold by unscrupulous traders for flax or timber, had added fresh horrors to the cruelty of native warfare. Hongi, the mighty chief of the Ngapuhi, was the outstanding figure of the north, and when Earle and his party met the celebrated conqueror, the scene made such an appeal that the artist begged permission to sketch the group. Earle was steeped in the classicism of the age; in his eyes the fierce intertribal conflicts possessed something of a Homeric character. 'In a beautiful bay, surrounded by high rocks and overhanging trees,' he wrote, 'the chiefs sat in mute contemplation, their arms piled high up in regular order on the beach. Hongi, not only from his high rank, but being in consequence of his wound tabooed or rendered holy, sat apart from the rest. He was arrayed in a new blanket which completely enveloped his figure, leaving exposed his highly tattooed face, and head profusely covered with long black curling hair, adorned with a quantity of white feathers.' The oil painting which Earle executed from this study is a masterpiece. Rich though restrained in colouring, beautifully drawn and composed, it expresses the dignity and simplicity of Maori life in a manner that has seldom been equalled and certainly never surpassed. It was the colonisation of New Zealand by the New Zealand Company that provided the country with a small band of settlers whose artistic powers were of a high order. These men, of whom the most talented was Charles Heaphy, were sent out as surveyors and topographical draughtsmen and it was part of their work to make faithful representations of the new settlements. Heaphy, who arrived in the Tory, was too competent an artist to be content with recording mere unimaginative studies. His watercolour drawings, in particular, are simple and direct and reveal a skill in composition and often a decorative quality which mark them as being something out of the ordinary. Heaphy travelled widely throughout the country and he too succumbed to the charm of the kauri forest, his painting of timber cutting at Hokianga being apage 10water colour of magnificent design and mastery of colour.

Another artist of the forties whose work became widely known in England was George French Angas, who arrived in Wellington in 1844. He quickly responded to the fascination of Maori life and on his extensive journeys throughout the North Island spent much time in sketching Maori carvings, many of which were fast falling into decay. In contrast to Heaphy, his main interests were anthropological rather than pictorial and perhaps his chief merit lies in his portraits of the most important native personages of the day. Although these are all superficial and achieve nothing save an uninspiring likeness, their historical value is great. Angas arrived in New Zealand at an opportune time for he was able to record the finest achievements of a native culture already dying.

Brees, who came to Wellington in 1842 as chief surveyor to the New Zealand Company and successor to Captain Mein Smith, whose artistic talents were indifferent, spent three years in the colony compiling a book of sketches. Many of these as engravings soon became popular and his panorama of the Port Nicholson district did much to attract emigrants from Britain to the new settlement. Among the early settlers who responded to the appeal of the New Zealand Company was John Alexander Gilfillan who had held the post of drawing and painting master at Anderson College, Glasgow. He arrived in Wellington on Christmas Day, 1841, and within a few months had settled in the Wanganui district. Unfortunately, as a result of the Maori disturbance there in 1847, his wife and three children were murdered and Gilfillan left the colony for Australia. His departure was a real loss to New Zealand art. Gilfillan was an excellent draughtsman and as he possessed a thorough knowledge of anatomy his life studies were vigorous and pleasing and his groups always well designed. From his many sketches of Maori life, he executed in Australia the splendid painting of a Maori pa near Wanganui. The original has been lost but lithographs of the subject are still common. In its way it is the finest study of simple native life that has yetpage 11been attempted. It breathes the very spirit of old New Zealand and its masterly composition and sound drawing mark it as the achievement of an artist of high ability.

Had these competent artists of the forties remained longer in the country, a greater impetus to the cultural development of the young country might have been given. But Angas, Brees, and Gilfillan soon drifted away and Heaphy became more engrossed in exploring and surveying than in painting. Spasmodic and often surprisingly good attempts to draw and sketch the configuration of the little known interior were made from time to time by surveyor-explorers like John Buchanan whose drawings of the Otago lakes are often exquisite in colour and arrangement and strikingly modern in their treatment of form. In general, however, these men were surveyors, not imaginative artists; they saw New Zealand as a future home for Englishmen, not as an artists' paradise and their attitude was topographical rather than interpretative. Thus it was not until the days of Richmond, Gully and Barraud that New Zealand possessed men who were eager to devote their talents to the furtherance of national art.

These men arrived in New Zealand early in the fifties with little or no training but imbued with a sound knowledge of the works of Turner, Constable and other English landscape painters. All three came to the colony not primarily to paint but rather to earn their living�Gully and Richmond as farmers and Barraud as a chemist. Richmond and Gully remained lifelong friends and in common with Barraud these amateurs endeavoured to paint the varied landscape of their new land. Richmond, a man of culture and of education, had no time to make his painting anything more than a hobby. Yet his keen knowledge of nature, his powers of observation, his innate good taste and his wide travel stood him in good stead. His bush studies are particularly pleasing and his drawings of trees are often excellent. John Gully, who in his day was so extravagantly praised, carried on the topographical tradition of the earlier artists and found in water colour the ideal medium forpage 12expressing ethereal distances and delicate, bush-clad mountains. There is little of real inspiration in his large canvasses though a great deal of technical skill. Yet it was perhaps natural that Gully with his uncompromising fidelity to nature should make so strong an appeal to a generation steeped in the sentimentalism of Victorian art and his non-intellectual portrayal of natural prettiness was bound to attract where a more vigorous treatment would repel. His influence on a host of minor New Zealand artists who endeavoured to follow in his footsteps was most marked, unfortunately with unhappy results and C. D. Barraud, another hopelessly over-rated artist of this school, has Gully's worst mannerisms without any of his saving graces. One painting of exceptional merit, however, emerges from the period, W. M. Hodgkins' Southern Alps of New Zealand, a water colour that captures the vital spirit of a landscape peculiar to New Zealand. In a sense it is the forerunner of a true New Zealand art toward which we are slowly moving. Hodgkins' work is, however, very uneven as is that of Nicholas Chevalier who arrived in New Zealand about 1865. He, too, was attracted by the mountains but his sketches seem more reminiscent of Switzerland than of New Zealand.

While New Zealand painting was thus definitely wedded to landscape subjects of the Gully tradition, with its stock formula of lake, bush, mountain and snow, a revival of portraiture, especially of the Maori, was brought about by the arrival of the German, Gottfried Lindauer who reached the colony in 1873 and set himself out to depict with amazing fidelity the Maori types which attracted him. Since the days of Angas, little interest had been shown in native culture. Apart from Barraud, who had painted some execrable portraits of native chiefs, and Robley, who in spite of the limitations of an ill-trained amateur, had endeavoured to record something of the intricate tattooing of vanishing days, art had no place for the Maori. Lindauer thus fulfilled a useful function. He was a sound draughtsman and a good, though unenterprising colourist. Yet in their way his records of native life are invalu-page 13able and they certainly reveal his rare insight into the character and culture of a people whom he viewed as a dying race.

During these years the population of the colony had been growing rapidly. The discovery of rich goldfields in Otago, Westland and the Coromandel Peninsula had attracted thousands of eager adventurers to the new diggings. With the increase of population there arose a demand for better educational facilities and the teaching of art received a tardy recognition. Early in 1870 David Hutton arrived in Otago from England and, under the direction of the Provincial Government, founded at Dunedin the first art school. In the same year a few citizens formed a Society of Arts in Auckland. Thus encouraged, other centres quickly established art societies and in 1881 the second art school opened at Christchurch, followed by Wellington in 1884 and Auckland in 1890. While these pioneer schools played an important part in the development of New Zealand art, their influence was not always stimulating, for although students had at last the opportunity of receiving tuition from some of the best English and Scottish teachers, there was always the danger that a rigid conservatism might check experiment and enterprise.

This stagnation of the nineties, however, ended with the arrival of two men, James Nairn, the Scot, and Van der Velden, the Dutchman, who between them were destined to exercise a profound influence on a number of young painters of promise. Nairn, who had been a member of the Glasgow Art Club, was closely associated in spirit with the leading Scottish impressionist landscape painters and his arrival in Wellington as a prophet of the new order was a national event. Nairn was never in the first flight as an artist but he possessed a charming personality and his rather cautious impressionism attracted, rather than repelled, the public. He was moreovel a competent draughtsman and sound colourist and his influence on students was stimulating. He certainly left his mark in New Zealand and his early death in 1904 robbed the country of his talents at a time when they could ill be spared.

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Meanwhile the Dutchman, Petrus Van der Velden, had settled in Christchurch where, by the close of the century, he had become the outstanding figure in local art circles. Steeped in the traditional Dutch style of painting and deeply influenced by Rembrandt, Van der Velden brought to the colony the best art training that Holland could give. In his youth Van der Velden showed such promise that he received favourable comments from the leading artists of the day. He was an accomplished painter and draughtsman and his decision to settle in Christchurch not only made that city the art centre of New Zealand but also did much to implant there that strong academic tradition in painting which it has never lost. His magnificent landscape, Otira Gorge, one of the treasures of the Dunedin Art Gallery, would hold its own in any company. It reveals the very essence and spirit of the rugged New Zealand scenery. Its power and intensity are almost overwhelming and in this masterpiece Van der Velden stands supreme.

Van der Velden's reputation does not rest merely on his artistic achievements. His influence was most marked on a group of talented pupils who were fortunate enough to benefit from the teachings of one trained and disciplined in the Dutch school. Robert Procter, Cecil and Elizabeth Kelly, Leonard Booth, Charles Bickerton, Raymond McIntyre, and Sydney Thompson were of this company and their subsequent successes are a tribute to the influence of a great teacher.

In the early years of this century New Zealand, indeed, was not devoid of talent. She possessed many young artists of great promise, some of whom like David Low, Frances Hodgkins, Heber Thompson, Eleanor Hughes, and Owen Merton, journeyed abroad in search of wider opportunities. At the same time Alfred Walsh, one of the finest water-colourists the Dominion has produced, was interpreting mountain and bush scenery in his own matchless way and in Auckland the Wright brothers and Goldie had turned for inspiration to the Maori and were continuing with great success the Lindauer tradition.

In spite of the influence of men like Nairn and Van derpage 15Velden, the early period which closed in 1914 had revealed no evidence of the growth of a native art possessing those national characteristics peculiar to the country. New Zealand's geographical remoteness from Europe, the paucity of art scholarships, the conservatism of her art schools and institutions, had debarred students from any direct contact with the works of post-impressionists or with current movements abroad. Moreover within the Dominion art was local rather than national. The South had little interest in the aims of the North and the four main centres drew their inspiration from the one or two overseas artists who had settled in their midst. Whereas the earlier artists had possessed the urge to depict the topography of the country and its native culture, those of this later period were governed solely by the aims of the local art school they attended or of the societies at which they exhibited.

The war took its toll of young men of promise in art as in other spheres. As a compensation, the art of the country gained tremendously by the impact of new ideas from abroad. The isolation of the Dominion was to a great extent broken down and the appointment of art specialists from overseas to the leading positions in training colleges, schools of art and other institutions throughout the country has in general been most beneficial. Through these channels post-war theories slowly flowed and the stagnant waters were at last troubled. Fortunately, perhaps, there was little experimenting with the fantasies of the more extreme schools of painting. New Zealand was too far from the scene of the conflict, for the impressions to be vivid; it was not a country with urgent and deep-rooted social problems crying out for redress. The experiments somewhat defiantly conducted were in the main merely imitative and rested on no deep social basis.

Since the Great War, however, one potent influence has developed—that of Cézanne, the direct link between the early impressionists and the post-war schools of painting. The most valuable aspect of his work, his strenuous insistence on form, has noticeably affected the outlook of many contemporary Newpage 16Zealand artists who are approaching the landscape of their country in a new spirit. In this respect New Zealand's remoteness and her inevitable delays in assimilating artistic developments have proved definite assets, for at least she has been spared those excesses which stultify true progress in the arts. Although it is quite apparent that at the present time New Zealand is far from possessing an art truly national, the future is not without promise. The interesting and praiseworthy efforts of young New Zealanders to interpret the characteristics of their country without undue reliance upon European styles and methods are slowly but unmistakably influencing the development of painting throughout the Dominion. At the same time the gradual breaking down of New Zealand's isolation and the influx of new ideas from Europe, the contributions of art societies and art galleries to the community life and the frequent arrival of stimulating art collections from overseas, are steadily leading to the creation of higher standards of taste and to the formation of a native tradition. Thus as the artists of the Dominion are cautiously moving away from the unimaginative and literal portrayal of the national life, they are gradually expressing their emotional response to the peculiar appeal of the land that is their home. The past century has shown that the Dominion has produced many gifted men and women who through force of circumstances have journeyed overseas to enrich the art of other countries. This is a national reproach. If New Zealand is to make her own contribution to the spiritual achievements of mankind, her people must display an intelligent and sympathetic interest in the culture of their country. If this is done and the people become the true patrons of the arts, there is no reason to doubt that in New Zealand's second century its native art will become its national pride. It is with this hope that the National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art goes forth on its long pilgrimage.

A. H. McLINTOCK

Wellington, February 1940