In the introduction to the catalogue of the Centennial Retrospective Exhibition of New Zealand Art, A. H. McLintock, the director and organiser, wrote: “Although it is quite apparent that at the present time (1940) New Zealand is far from possessing an art truly national, the future is not without promise”. That statement remains substantially true 20 years later. A retrospective exhibition on a similar scale today would reveal changes but no major development.

It would seem to be logical that New Zealand, so similar in area and climate to Britain whose people settled here, should lean strongly towards British tradition in art, and substantially this is what has happened. Inevitably, our artistic beginnings are recorded almost exclusively in that most English of mediums, watercolours.

We have to decide, however, whether we are to accept as our starting point the works of charming but minor British artists like Heaphy, Angas, and Brees, just because they happened to come to New Zealand, or to forge the links back to Cotman, De Wint, Constable, and Turner. Believing this to be the proper course, the National Art Gallery has acquired through the Sir Harold Beauchamp Fund, a small but choice collection of eighteenth century English watercolours. These have been enriched by the recent generous gifts from Archdeacon F. H. D. Smythe to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in particular and, to a lesser extent, to the National Gallery, of approximately 1,000 eighteenth and nineteenth century British watercolours and drawings. These include some important items but are mainly lesser works by the greater people, and typical and often fine works by the lesser known. These collections lend added interest to the early New Zealand sections of our art galleries and to two notable historical collections housed in the Alexander Turnbufl Library, Wellington, and the Hocken Library, Dunedin. Another library, not in New Zealand, the Mitchell in Sydney, recently purchased a most comprehensive collection of early pictures of Australia and New Zealand. These had been assembled by Rex Nan Kivell, a New Zealander, now director of the Redfern Gallery, London. The New Zealand section was generously lent by Nan Kivell for exhibition throughout New Zealand in 1953–54. In spite of the great interest aroused, no successful effort was made to secure this collection for New Zealand.

Cultural Traditions

By the time energetic pioneering had provided for a more leisurely way of life in New Zealand in which the arts might merit indulgence, great changes had taken place in Europe. The banner of art nouveau had been raised–and lowered. The French Impressionism had arrived. Overseas journals had presented their endless jokes about Cubism. “Jazz” patterns appeared on fabrics. Art magazines propounded new theories; New Zealand artists who had been working overseas and those who came to teach proved either disturbing or stimulating according to the varied reactions to new ideas. An ever-increasing flood of art books and more and more exhibitions from abroad revealed new conceptions, new languages in art. How could the threads which ran from the Britain our grandfathers had left, hold fast to the anchor of tradition? Art became controversial even though the arguments, like the works that inspired them, were exotic. The Angry Young Men of the thirties rallied against an academic tradition that had, in fact, never been established here. Art society selection committees were faced with submissions in modish and provocative abstract garb. Generally they accepted them, knowing in their hearts that these pseudo-revolutionary works stemmed from a secondhand reaction. The years passed, the “isms” in Europe multiplied and New Zealanders had to face the fact that the country, traditionally, was some 20 years behind the artistic times. Could we miss out a few laps and join in the running or would that be cheating? Or should we seek our cultural roots in the Pacific? It could be argued that countries bounding or set in the vast Pacific have as many separate cultures, some indigenous, some stemming from Europe, and some from the East. There is no common tradition. It is true that the Maoris had evolved a form or architecture in which wood carving, plaited flax and reeds, and painted rafter patterns were distinctive enrichments . These and Maori cave paintings have been studied and appreciated both by Maori and by Pakeha. But their meaning and purpose is of the past and they linger on in practice only as traditional crafts. Their motifs have been used effectively in decorative schemes but their original purpose and significance have vanished and, with them, the creative impulse. No Maori artist of stature has yet arrived. The process of integration has isolated the Maori of today from the living meaning of the arts of his forefathers, and his culture must, from now on, be one with that of his European neighbours.

In Canada the Group of Seven, with one urgent gesture, established a basic national idiom which in colour, rhythm, and texture incorporated elements of impressionism and post-impressionism, and which foreshadowed expressionism. Theirs was a Canadian art which was also “modern” and a logical development has followed. Australian art has followed a more complex pattern but there is now a definite Australian school of painting, Australian artists who have established themselves in London, Nolan, and Drysdale for example, have retained a strong Australian flavour in their work. So too, have Canadians. New Zealanders, on the other hand, seem to lack this artistic nationality. Frances Hodgkins and Raymond McIntyre might have been born almost anywhere, for no clue is given in their overseas work as to their country of origin.

We are, strangely enough, far more familiar with Canadian art than with neighbouring Australian. The Canadian National Gallery has sent a considerable number of exhibitions to New Zealand. In 1938, sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation, a comprehensive collection of contemporary Canadian painting toured this country. It was designed to demonstrate, or perhaps rather to celebrate, the arrival of a school that was neither British, Continental, nor American but truly Canadian. A. Y. Jackson's “Winter in Quebec” was acquired from this exhibition for the National Gallery in Wellington. Arthur Lismer, educational director of the Art Gallery of Toronto, visited New Zealand at this time and his stimulating presence inspired the first serious efforts to establish art gallery educational programmes. An exhibition of contemporary Canadian watercolours followed in 1949 and there have been collections of silk-screen reproductions of Canadian paintings and illustrated lecture tours arranged by the Canadian High Commissioner's office. In 1950, the magnificent collection of British paintings presented to the National Gallery of Canada by the Rt. Hon. Vincent Massey was most generously lent for exhibition in Australia and New Zealand. Lack of finance presented not only the sending of an exchange exhibition to Canada about 1950, but also the acceptance of an invitation from the Tate Gallery, London, to stage an exhibition of New Zealand art. In 1940 a retrospective and contemporary collection, which had been selected by A. H. McLintock for exhibition in the United States, was ready for dispatch when the outbreak of war in the Pacific led to the abandonment of the scheme. In 1958, at the invitation of the Soviet Ministry of Culture, a collection of paintings and original prints, illustrating art and life in New Zealand, was sent to the U.S.S.R. for exhibition during 1959. This was in return for a comprehensive exhibition of contemporary Soviet art which toured New Zealand in 1957.

Recent Trends

It is highly probable that the original Canadian exhibition inspired the formation of a number of groups throughout New Zealand. Some of these are still active though they tend to cater for group exhibitions rather than for group activities, and nothing comparable to the Canadian Group of Seven has emerged. In Christchurch a number of artists, particularly the Kellys, Cecil and Elizabeth, and Archibald Nicoll produced landscapes that were individually and in the mass strongly indicative of the “Canterbury School”. And in Auckland John Weeks fostered a definite Auckland approach to the landscape of the north. Rita Cook painted the little railway station at Cass (now in the Robert McDougall Gallery) and Roland Hipkins “discovered” Wellington suburbia (Napier Art Gallery). These were some of the signposts pointing to a more inquisitive and exciting vision. But the quest was not sustained. No group rallied round and no manifesto was formulated. Lee-Johnson's interpretations of Northland, and the rivers and lakes of McCormack have remained as personal to the artists as have Van der Velden's and Walsh's Otira paintings. There have been achievements, but they have been unrelated to any Movement.

Since 1938 our art galleries have acquired more exhibits, and new galleries have been established; art societies have increased their memberships and new societies and clubs have come into being. More students have passed through our art schools and some of the schools have changed their status. There are more full-time professional artists making a living in New Zealand today than at any other time, and this in spite of the continuing steady exodus of our painters and designers overseas. Each year brings more and more exhibitions from abroad. We are able to read more art periodicals and books on art than ever before. Since 1951, however, when the last Arts Year Book appeared, there has been no publication devoted to the art of New Zealand. Major art competitions have been conducted, important works have been commissioned from time to time, and each year new records in picture sales have been established. Small private galleries in ever increasing numbers have fostered one-man shows and group exhibitions.

It has frequently been remarked by visitors that it is easier to exhibit in New Zealand than anywhere else in the world and that press notices are quite lavishly bestowed regardless of the stature of the exhibitor. This is to the advantage of the amateur rather than the professional artist who suffers further in that professional status may be claimed regardless of professional qualifications. And this is at least as true of art criticism as it is of painting. Art criticism cannot provide full-time employment and is undertaken as a sideline, generally by fulltime journalists. It would be unreasonable to expect the newspaper editors who allot generous space to art reviews to cater for the minority of their readers who seek specialised criticisms. A reviewer who attempted the latter would, I imagine, be granted lines rather than columns. The experienced newspaper man naturally seeks either to please the conservative majority or to be provocative and thus indiscriminately feature the avant-garde. As a result, the moderate and probably most significant works tend to pass unnoticed. Eric Ramsden, of Wellington's Evening Post, unflinching champion of the traditional, probably did more than anyone else to convince newspaper editors of the news value of art. H. V. Miller's articles and art reviews in the Evening Star, Dunedin, have for many years maintained an exemplary standard of insight and sincerity.

Landscapes have always dominated our exhibitions and are likely to continue to do so. New Zealanders are country folk at heart. They live in towns and cities because they have to, but during summer holidays and weekends, they flock to the country or to the coast. The great majority of our artists are weekend painters who combine their painting with their love of the out-of-doors. Most of the pictures purchased are landscapes, particularly those which remind their owners of pleasant holidays or excursions. The quest for the “typical” New Zealand landscape is as eager now as it was in the eighties, and until this phase is exhausted and a national vision has replaced the local, it is unlikely that we shall raise our eyes to international levels.

Apart from landscapes, our exhibitions present the usual still lifes, portraits, sculptures, and graphic art. Figure compositions are rare and undistinguished. Cities and city life attract few other than Eve Page, Peter McIntyre, Frank Gross, and notably Colin Wheeler. Genre of course is not in fashion but there are probably social reasons for its neglect in New Zealand. The absence of domestic help has fostered the employment of mechanical labour saving devices in the home and these have not proved to be attractive to painters. Kitchens are efficient rather than picturesque and eating places in the cities do not encourage lingering. Lunch is generally something to be dealt with as promptly as possible. Drinking, too, has been an activity demanding efficient service rather than elegance, and public hotel bars during the hour before 6 p.m. closing time have been exclusively occupied by a male population so intent on the serious business of consumption that an intruding observer would be very unwelcome. The recent reappearance of barmaids is promising. The national games are amply recorded by press photographers and film cameramen. There is nothing distinctive in the clothing we wear or in the buildings we live and work in. And so genre painting languishes. It is left to our cartoonists such as the veteran Minhinnick, the laughing Neville Lodge, and Dunedin's Sid Scales to observe and comment on our way of life. The pictorial possibilities of the world around us are revealed, too, in the book illustrations of Russell Clark and D. K. Turner, while our pioneers re-enact their lives in the murals of James Turkington and Mervyn Taylor

Paul Olds, after five years in Britain and Europe, has sought out the underlying abstractions of Wellington's hilly architecture. Abstract simplification as practised by John Weeks represents the generally accepted limit of modernity in New Zealand. There are a few more extreme practitioners. Colin McCahon has reduced subject matter to Rothko terms of geometric simplicity but much work in contemporary European idiom is frankly derivative and mannerist. Impressionism varying in terms from Sydney Thompson's (learned in France) and T. A. McCormack's (akin to Chinese calligraphic painting) is abundantly evident, but the more violent Expressionism is practically absent save for isolated and affected manifestations. Our way of life is too even, too temperate, and too secure economically, socially, and in politics and climate to foster a deeply emotional or violently expressive art.

No one has been able to take Archibald Nicoll's place as the recognised portrait painter, and most of the official likenesses have been painted by the Australian William Dargie, who has visited the country from time to time. Eve Page has painted a number of colourful and dashing portraits but she prefers models of her own choosing. The versatile Peter McIntyre is capable of good portraiture but is devoted rather to landscapes and subject pictures. Leonard Mitchell and numerous others exhibit portraits which generally represent the least distinguished side of their accomplishments. Apart from the immaculately organised compositions of John Weeks and the spontaneous and beautiful watercolours of T. A. McCormack, little of note has been accomplished in still life painting.

Public Response

The public demand for realistic paintings of attractive localities, notably central Otago, with autumn tints thrown in for preference, has fostered the production of an over-abundance of topographical trifles, paintings which owe more to the colour camera than to the painter's skill. There is, however, a growing appreciation of serious paintings. This has been encouraged by the increasing number of one-man and small exhibitions which have brought to notice such artists as Juliet Peter, Roy Cowan, W. A. Sutton, Helen Stewart, William Mason, Melvin Day, Toss Woollaston, John Holmwood, Douglas McDiarmid (working in Paris), T. W. Coomber, Allan Leary (teaching in South Africa), James Young (working in London), D. K. Turner, Joan Fanning, and others. It is odd that we have no graphic art society in New Zealand, for today there is growing a somewhat belated appreciation of the work done over many years by many of our best artists. Some have been represented in international exhibitions of graphic art. Well known print-makers have included H. Linley Richardson, A. H. McLintock, George Woods, K. W. Hassall, Irvine Major, Maurice Smith, Roy Cowan, Juliet Peter, James Young, John Drawbridge, Joan Fanning, Michael Browne, Rona Dyer, Don Ramage, and Sue Skerman. The late Lady Mabel Annesley, who lived and worked for some years in New Zealand, was a source of inspiration to many of our print-makers. The pen drawings of Barc (Helen Crabb) and Eric LeeJohnson have set a standard in draughtsmanship.

A record of monuments in public places in New Zealand would reveal, with few exceptions, a dreary and unimaginative panorama. This reflects not on our sculptors, but rather on those who commission or fail to commission works. Up till now, sculptors have been forced to teach for a living and it is good to know that opportunities not granted to them are opening out for their students. Men like Richard Gross, J. M. Ellis, Francis Shurrock, R. N. Field, and A. R. Fraser have been inspiring teachers whose works in public places are all too few, though Gross did execute a number of important commissions, including the Wellington Citizen's War Memorial. During the past few years, Russell Clark and T. V. Johnston have been commissioned to produce a number of important works for public places, and first rate sculpture has come from the studios of Lorna Ellis, Molly Macalister, and Margaret Garland. Mervyn Taylor, best known in graphic art, has added sculpture in wood to his varied accomplishments.

There is now in New Zealand an enthusiastic and flourishing Society of Potters. It is too early to claim that a distinctive New Zealand idiom has been evolved, but local materials have been used effectively and a standard of sound craftsmanship and design established. In 1962 the recently appointed Arts Advisory Council, Crown Lynn Potteries, and the New Zealand Society of Potters jointly sponsored a visit to this country by Bernard Leach. The inspiring presence of this eminent authority has further stimulated a thriving movement. Among many who have contributed might be mentioned Isobel Mathieson and Olive Jones, pioneers of the movement, Leonard Castle, Patricia Perrin, Helen Mason, Peter Stitchbury, Roy Cowan, Juliet Peter, Doreen Blumhardt, T. Barrow, Nan Berkeley, and J. L. Stewart.

Aid to the Arts

In 1960 the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon. W. R. Anderton, announced the personnel of the Arts Advisory Council (mentioned above) to advise the Minister on the allocation of grants to cultural institutions No definite policy relating to the visual arts has yet been published, flexibility being regarded as of prime importance at this stage. When the Council was announced, concern was expressed at the absence of direct representation of the visual arts on the Council, and a visual arts advisory committee has been appointed. No precise programme has yet been published, but study awards on a reduced scale are to be continued, these being for overseas, in exceptional cases only, and for a maximum of two years. This will prevent students without private means from undertaking a complete diploma course overseas (normally three or four years) and will exclude those schools or colleges where only diploma students are admitted. This is a great pity as our better students will miss the stimulation of being pitted against the best in Britain and from other Commonwealth countries. It has been announced that there will be grants towards costs of travelling exhibitions and that works of art will be purchased and commissioned. A travelling study award of £1,000 has been made to T. Woollaston, who has already received two previous awards from the Association of New Zealand Art Societies.

The system is weakened by the fact that the Council is advisory only. It advises the Minister on grants to active art institutions but being without its own funds, staff, or premises, it cannot originate and operate schemes as can a fully fledged arts council. Since the members are busy people in their private spheres, meetings cannot be too frequent and decisions on applications from art bodies for assistance are apt to be deferred. It will undoubtedly be increasingly necessary for art bodies to discuss and decide their mutual needs and to ensure that their representations to the Minister are sound, reasonable, and in the best interests of all. The Association of New Zealand Art Societies is now practically fully representative of the societies, and closer liaison between the art galleries must be established, probably through regular meetings of representatives. This should lead to a far more effective planning of exhibition programmes than has been achieved in the past. For many years art galleries have managed to work together on a basis of friendly cooperation but a system regularised, though without regimentation, must be evolved to keep pace with changing patterns of procedure. It is hoped that the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, which in 1964 replaced the Arts Advisory Council, will evince greater understanding in fostering the visual arts.

Some Expatriates

It is easy to forget New Zealand artists working overseas. Everyone knows, of course, that David Low was born in New Zealand and the word “expatriate” immediately calls to mind Frances Hodgkins. The term hardly applies to those who find conditions overseas more congenial to the fulfilment of their careers and who voluntarily make their homes in Britain or elsewhere. John Hutton, for example, has completed a 10 years' project on the great west screen of engraved plate glass in the new Coventry Cathedral. Frederick Coventry is now a mural painter of note in Britain, and Williams Newlands and Kenneth Clark are established potters of distinction. Also settled more or less permanently in Britain are the painters and graphic artists, E. Heber Thompson (recently retired from Hornsey College of Art), James Boswell, Felix Kelly, and James Young (Prix de Rome in Etching, 1950). National Gallery scholarship winners William Culbert, Michael Browne, and John Drawbridge are still in Britain, as are Melvin Day and a number of other younger painters. Douglas McDiarmid continues to live and to paint in Paris. Alan Ingham, sculptor, has been working in Melbourne for years and Australia has claimed both Roland Wakelin and Robert Johnson. Maud Sherwood and James Cook spent most of their painting lives in Australia and both died there within the last decade.

Thus the exodus of some of our best artists continues. While Frances Hodgkins was living abroad, so also were Raymond McIntyre, Owen Merton, Frederick Porter, Rona Haszard, Leslie Greener, Francis McCracken, Ronald McKenzie, and Cecil Jameson. Others will undoubtedly follow, for New Zealand is not yet a paradise for the artist. Only very few can hope to live by painting without pandering to popular and uninformed taste. Commissions are still too few and often too unattractive financially. Teaching, to provide a livelihood, is very much a full-time occupation with little opportunity for the teacher's own work. Artists are deprived of the opportunities of exhibiting with their overseas colleagues and lack the stimulus of international competition. They cannot be refreshed by visiting the great collections of works by old and modern masters. Most of our artists are prepared to stay in New Zealand and accept these limitations. Many settle down to become teachers or commercial artists. Some believe that in spite of all the difficulties, there is sufficient inspiration here to promise fulfilment and that our comparative artistic isolation could prove a blessing. If we lack opportunity to measure our achievements by international standards, at least we are spared the necessity of conforming to relentless international fashions. Alfred Walsh, John Weeks, and T. A. McCormack are unknown internationally, but their painting has nourished an art emerging in our South Pacific islands. Their contribution may well prove ultimately to be of greater significance than the winning of international medals.

Sculpture Competition

In June 1964 the Arts Advisory Council, acting on the recommendations of its Visual Arts Advisory Committee, conducted a closed competition for a piece of sculpture to be placed in Riddiford Park, Lower Hutt. The five sculptors invited to submit models were P. Beadle, W. R. Allen (Elam School of Fine Art, Auckland), Molly Macalister (Auckland), and Russell Clark and E. J. Doudney (Canterbury University School of Art, Christchurch). Russell Clark's model “Free Standing Forms” was unanimously selected for the £1,000 prize. The judges were J. C. Beaglehole (chairman), P. A. Tomory, Cedric Firth, W. A. Sutton, and C. Brasch.

by Stewart Bell Maclennan, A.R.C.A.(LOND.), Director, National Art Gallery, Wellington.