webb's important paintings and contemporary art july 2012
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IMPORTANT PAINTINGS &
CONTEMPORARY ART
TUESDAY 31 JULY 2012, 6.30PM
New Zealand’sPremier Auction House18 Manukau RoadPO Box 99 251Newmarket, Auckland 1149New ZealandP +649 524 6804F +649 524 7048 auctions@webbs.co.nz
www.webbs.co.nz
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Webb’s 2012 winter season of Important Paintings and
Contemporary Art will present the market with significant
and rarely available contemporary, modern and historical
New Zealand practice. Webb’s is pleased to announce that
the sale includes an important single-vendor collection: the
estate of the late Sylvia and Peter Siddell. Reflecting on two
lives spent immersed in New Zealand art, the Siddell family
collection is a compelling survey of modern New Zealand
practice by artists such as Colin McCahon, Robin White,
Milan Mrkusich and Richard Killeen which they assembled
throughout their lifetimes. The family has also agreed to
release a work by each of Peter and Sylvia.
The contemporary section is anchored by a large-scale work
by Bill Hammond which is to be offered to the secondary
market for the first time. At the Flood, which belongs to
the Ancestral series, sees Hammond cast his focus back
to his visit to the remote Auckland Islands which inspired
his creation of avian creatures. Referencing the biblical
deluge intended to rid the world of human sin, At the Flood
presents the viewer with a lush, green world untouched by
the human hand, inhabited by a genus of creatures that has
been allowed to evolve in complete isolation. Notably, the
work was realised on a three-panelled kauri altarpiece that
Hammond has painted on both its inside and outside planes
– allowing it to present as a fully resolved work in both its
open and closed states. Complementing this seminal work
from Hammond’s mid-career period are works by practising
New Zealand artists such as Kushana Bush, John Ward
Knox, Tony de Latour, Max Gimblett, Gretchen Albrecht and
Elizabeth Thomson.
We will once again offer the market an in-depth, well-
referenced selection of modernist New Zealand painting.
The Veil of Saint Veronica, commenced by Tony Fomison
on Good Friday 1973 and completed over the Easter
weekend, belongs to a small but highly important and
extremely rare body of works in which the artist depicted
Jesus Christ. Colin McCahon’s The Lark’s Song, from
the Siddell family collection, was painted in 1969 and
recites a poem by Matire Kereama of the same title (in the
same year, McCahon painted another work based on this
poem on a pair of wooden doors which is now held in the
collection at Auckland Art Gallery). The works from this
period are highly important documents that informed the
text works made in the last years of the artist’s life. Another
significant period of McCahon’s practice is represented by
the offering of an untitled oil on unstretched jute canvas
from McCahon’s series of Northland paintings, to which the
well-known Northland Panels (held in the collection of the
Te Papa Tongarewa) belong. This series of work was painted
directly after McCahon’s return from an extensive research
INTRODUCTION
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IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 3
trip to the United States. Prior to this international travel,
McCahon’s approach took its lead from European modernism
whereas, after his return, the influence of mid-century
American expressionism caused a distinct and lasting shift
in his working methods. Further works by New Zealand
modernists Rita Angus, Don Binney, Pat Hanly, Louise
Henderson, Philip Clairmont, Jeffrey Harris and Ralph
Hotere are also included.
The offering of a number of notable works by Charles Goldie
and Frances Hodgkins will comprise a comprehensive and
highly focused suite of historical New Zealand paintings.
Two important portraits by Charles Goldie are included
and each exemplifies a distinct and notable period in the
artist’s career. No Koora Te Cigaretti, painted in 1915, is
a portrait of Mihipeka Wairama of the Tuhourangi iwi; she
is a sitter whom Goldie revisited and depicted a number of
times throughout his career. The geographical boundaries
of Tuhourangi’s traditional region are centred on Lake
Tarawera and, whilst the eruption of 1886 largely displaced
the iwi, its survivors – such as Mihipeka Wairama and Kapi
Kapi – received an enduring level of focus from Goldie.
Ngatirea (Day Dreams), Natarua Hangapa – Arawa Tribe
pictures a sitter who descends from the Maori settlers who
sailed to New Zealand on the great Arawa waka. The work
is an excellent example of Goldie’s later career work, which
saw the artist return to the romantic approach that he
successfully honed at the Académie Julian in Paris during
the 1880s where he used loose brushwork and richer tones.
The four works by Frances Hodgkins that are included,
comprising figurative and landscape painting, were all
completed prior to 1922 during the artist’s residence in
Europe. This was a pivotal period in Hodgkin’s career as it
saw the artist evolve as a talented lyrical watercolourist,
laying the foundation for the fauvist abstraction of her
later career.
Following this sale of Important Paintings and Contemporary
Art are three specialist auctions: Militaria on Wednesday 1
August, Antiques and Decorative Arts on Thursday 2 August
and Modern Design on 7 August 2012, all of which are
catalogued in a stand-alone, accompanying publication.
Looking further forward, Webb’s is currently seeking entries
for our final sales of the calendar year. Our next sale in the
A2 category will be held on 25 September and the
next sale of Important Paintings and Contemporary Art on
27 November. We encourage you to contact Webb’s for a
free, no-obligation appraisal or for advice about current
market dynamics.
SOPHIE COUPLAND
IN FOCUS 3
COVER: LOT 33 MICHAEL PAREKOWHAI
Driving Mr. Albert
rabbit, polyurethane, two-pot automotive paint
1635mm x 255mm x 255mm
$20,000 - $30,000
INSIDE FRONT COVER: LOT 30 BILL HAMMOND
At the Flood
acrylic on board, three-panel altarpiece
construction
$180,000 - $220,000
4
A. Allen Maddox Self Portrait achieved $28,600B. Important Whale-tooth Rei Puta achieved $55,100C. Charles Goldie Maori Woman with Moko achieved $160,000D. Peter Siddell Western Balcony achieved $100,100E. Large Chinese Blue and White Rice Bowl achieved $29,300F. Emerald-cut diamond of 5.07ct and rare white (G), clarity VS2 achieved $165,800
G. Falcon Chair and Footstool achieved $4,700H. Pat Hanly “Golden Age” 3 with White Butterfly achieved $137,250I. Philip Clairmont In Homage to Vincent (Self Portrait) achieved $24,600J. Bill Hammond Boulder Bay Birds achieved $49,300 K. Don Binney Two Aspects of Tokatoka achieved $134,400L. A Pair of Oriental Hardwood Carved Armchairs achieved $28,100
HIGHLIGHTS
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IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 5
M. Colin McCahon A Poem of Kaipara Flat 16 achieved $103,000N. Ralph Hotere The Wind I burnished steel in original Roger Hicken frame, achieved $97,200O. Colin McCahon Kaipara Flat With a Blue Sky achieved $91,500P. Early Siebe Gorman Twelve Bolt Dive Helmet achieved $7,000Q. Michael Parekowhai, Bosom of Abraham achieved $7,400R. Milo Baughman black leather armchairs (pair) achieved $3,100S. Fabergé Lapis Lazuli and Yellow Gold Box, Workmaster Henrik Wigstrom, achieved $87,750
T. Toss Woollaston Lyttlelton Harbour achieved $30,900U. 1974 Jaguar Mk III E Type V17 Roadster achieved $123,000V. Len Castle Yellow Sulphur Bowl achieved $6,900W. Archie Shine Hamilton Sideboard by Robert Heritage achieved $5,200X. Richard Killeen City Living achieved $38,900Y. An Early Colonial Taxidermy Case of New Zealand Birds achieved $14,100
All prices listed are inclusive of buyer’s premium and gst, rounded to the nearest $100.
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IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 7
MODERN DESIGN07.08.2012, 6.00PM
CATALOGUE NOW AVAILABLE VIEW ONLINE
Webb’s and Mr. Bigglesworthy are pleased to announce a sale featuring organic and minimalist Scandinavian design, armchairs and sideboards from leading English furniture manufacturers G-Plan, as well as one of the most recognised armchairs in the world, Charles Eames’ 670 Armchair and Ottoman by Herman Miller alongside pieces by Charlotte Perriand, Mies van der Rohe, Florence Knoll, Peter Hvidt, Arne Jacobsen, Grant Featherston and Michael Payne. Mid-century modern has continued to be enduringly popular with this market, establishing itself as one of the key areas in contemporary collecting.
CONTACT
Josh Williams
E: jwilliams@webbs.co.nz
P: 021 073 6545
Black Leather Eames 670 Armchair and Ottoman
by Herman Miller with cherrywood veneer.
$5,000 - $7,000
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JEWELSWEDNESDAY 29 AUGUST
CONSIGN NOWEntries invited, closing Wednesday 25 July. Contact Christopher Devereaux to make an appointment for an obligation-free appraisal. Ring set with a 19.38ct emerald in platinum
with 4.65ct of fine quality diamonds
$90,000 - $120,000.
Necklace set with a 9.98ct emerald and
15.5ct of diamonds in 18ct white gold
$70,000 - $80,000
CONTACT
Christopher Devereaux
E: cdevereaux@webbs.co.nz
P: 09 529 5606
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By Zora Bell Boyd
From the curious to the contemporary, this is your chance to acquire something entirely unique for that impossible person in your life.
COMING SOON: IMPROBABLE GIFTS FOR IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE #2
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ANTIQUES & DECORATIVE ARTS
02.08.2012, 6:00PM
CATALOGUE NOW AVAILABLE VIEW ONLINE
Presenting Royal Worcester and rare Royal Doulton and Wedgwood porcelain, Georgian and Victorian silver, antique furniture including superb European marquetry furniture, exceptional chandeliers and other lighting, antique Chinese and Japanese porcelain, jade, ivory and scrolls, Persian rugs, 20th-century German tin-plate toys, a collection of vintage ladies' handbags, a Georgian Intaglio collection and an 1893 New Zealand Rugby Union cap.
CONTACT
James Hogan
E: jhogan@webbs.co.nz
P: 021 510 477
A Fine Georgian Sterling
Silver Coffee Pot
$2,000 - $2,500
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 13
Auckland 547a Parnell Road, Parnell 1052 | Tel +64 9 358 3771Arrowtown 18 Buckingham Street, Arrowtown 9302 | Tel +64 3 442 0128 Email info@cavitco.com | www.cavitco.com
“I desIgn each pIece wIth the eye of a sculptor.”
thomas pheasant
4246M Webbs Thomas Advert.indd 3 12/07/12 12:00 PM
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WELLINGTON FINE ART
SPECIALIST SERVICES
STUDIO CERAMICS
Contact: Brian Wood
E: bwood@webbs.co.nz
P: 021 486948
Three Len Castle Gourds
blue glazed stoneware
impressed LC mark underside
$3,000 - $6,000 each
SCULPTURE 11.2012 CONSIGN NOW
New Zealand Historical and Contemporary Studio Ceramics, including works by Len Castle, Mirek Smisek, Barry Brickell, Yvonne Rust, Ann Verdcourt, John Parker, Estelle Martin, Jim Cooper and others.
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 15
Webb’s is very pleased to announce the appointment of Carey Young as the head of Webb’s fine art services in Wellington. Carey comes to the role with 10 years' experience with a leading dealer gallery and is available to undertake current market appraisals, commentary on current market trends and valuations for insurance and other purposes. Works will also be available privately to Wellington clients, outside of the auction calendar. Complete packing, freight and logistic services will be provided to Wellington clients.
WELLINGTON FINE ART
SPECIALIST SERVICES
CONTACT
E: cyoung@webbs.co.nz
P: 021 368 348
CLASSIC MOTORCYCLES AND CARS OF THE DAY
10.2012 CONSIGN NOW
1968 Norton P11 Ranger
$15,000 - $20,000
CONTACT
Neil Campbell
E: ncampbell@webbs.co.nz
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FINE & RARE WINE
06.08.2012CONTACT
Simon Ward
E: wine@webbs.co.nz
P: 09 529 5600
Louis XIII Cognac de Rémy Martin
“A century in a bottle” - one of a series of
cognacs bottled for a 1938 royal banquet at
the opulent Château de Versailles that King
George VI and Queen Elizabeth attended.
Some of the eaux-de-vie blended to form this
particular cognac would date back to the
middle of the 19th century.
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 19
IMPORTANT NEW ZEALAND
FURNITURE04.09.2012
CONSIGN NOW
CONTACT
Neil Campbell
E: ncampbell@webbs.co.nz
P: 021 875 966
Anton Seuffert, The Burton Cabinet,
1870. An exquisite Louis XV
revival escritoire or ‘bonheur du
jour’ cabinet, composed of New
Zealand native timbers, with
elaborate carved and marquetry
decoration.
$300,000 - $350,000
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OCEANIC & AFRICAN ART
04.09.2012 CONSIGN NOW
CONTACT
Jeff Hobbs
E: jhobbs@webbs.co.nz
P: 021 503 251
Finely Carved Waka Huia (detail)
$10,000 - $15,000
When you enjoy a bottle of Peregrine or Saddleback you not only experience a taste
of Central Otago, you also directly contribute towards the survival and recovery of
our New Zealand’s endemic Falcons and Saddlebacks.
Peregrine is a major sponsor of both the New Zealand Wingspan Trust and
the Fiordland Conservation Trust, who are fully committed to the protection
and survival of these rare and unique birds. We think this is something worth
savouring. To order our wines and to find out more information on these projects
– visit our website or call into our cellar door.
www.peregrinewines.co.nzPeregrine Wines, Kawarau Gorge Rd, Gibbston, Queenstown
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 23
338
EVENING PREVIEW Thursday 26 July 5:30pm – 7:30pm
BUYER’S PREMIUM A buyer’s premium of 15% will be charged on all items in the Important Paintings and Contemporary Art sale. GST (15%) is payable on the buyer’s premium.
Please join us to view the suite of sales and enjoy a glass of wine thanks to Peregrine Wines, Central Otago.
TUESDAY 31 JULY 2012, 6:30 PM
IMPORTANT PAINTINGS & CONTEMPORARY ART
CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE
No Koora te Cigaretti, A Portrait of
Mihipeka Wairama, Tuhourangi
oil on canvas
Estimate $170,000 - $200,000
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Viewing
Thursday 26 July 9.00am – 7.30pm
Friday 27 July 9.00am – 5.30pm
Saturday 28 July 11.00am – 3.00pm
Sunday 29 July 11.00am – 3.00pm
Monday 30 July 9.00am – 5.30pm
Tuesday 31 July 9.00am – 12.00pm
LIMITED VIEWING ON SALE DAY
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KUSHANA BUSH
Modern Semaphore, Full Continental
Expression
gouache and pencil on paper signed Kushana Bush, dated 2009 and inscribed Kushana Bush, Modern Semaphore, ‘Full continental extension’, Gouache and pencil on paper in pencil middle verso; Brett McDowell Gallery label affixed to backing board verso 1000mm x 700mm
Estimate $4,000 - $6,000
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IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 25
TONY DE LAUTOUR
Heads, Numbers, Mountains
oil on canvas signed Tony de Lautour, dated 2000 and inscribed Heads, Numbers, Mountains in brushpoint upper edge 700mm x 500mm
Estimate $4,000 - $5,000
2JOHN WARD KNOX
Untitled - Study Of Hands
oil on calico signed John Ward Knox, dated 2010 in pencil upper edge verso 500mm x 300mm
Estimate $2,500 - $3,500
3
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 27
TONY DE LAUTOUR
NZ Co
oil on unstretched canvas signed Tony de Lautour, dated 1998 (indistinct) and inscribed NZ Co in brushpoint lower right 1050mm x 2140mm
ILLUSTRATEDNew Zealand Listener, 19 September 1998, Mightier Than the Sword by Tessa Laird
Estimate $18,000 - $24,000
4
PETER STICHBURY
Untitled (Girl in a Coat)
graphite on paper signed P. Stichbury and dated 2003 in graphite lower left; Temple Gallery label affixed verso 560mm x 420mm
PROVENANCEPrivate collection, Auckland. Purchased by the present owner from Temple Gallery, Dunedin.
Estimate $4,000 - $6,000
5
TERRY STRINGER
The Wrestlers
patinated, cast bronze sculpture, ed 2/3 signed Terry Stringer, dated 2008 and inscribed 2/3 lower edge height 750mm
Estimate $8,000 - $12,000
6
TERRY STRINGER
Elevation
pair of patinated bronze bookends signed Terry Stringer and dated 1999 lower edge 120mm x 120mm x 15mm (each)
Estimate $2,000 - $3,000
7
PETER STICHBURY
Glister
giclee print, 25/100 signed P. Stichbury and dated 08 in pencil lower right 265mm x 230mm
Estimate $2,500 - $3,500
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COLIN MCCAHON
Puketutu Manukau
suite of four lithographs, edition of 100 one signed Colin McCahon, dated 1957, and inscribed Puketutu Manukau, 3 lithographs and ed. 100, Published by Peter Webb, High St., Auckland in lithograph facsimile; one signed C McC and dated 57 in lithograph facsimile lower right; one dated ‘57 and inscribed Puketutu from my boat and ed. 100 in lithograph facsimile lower left 215mm x 265mm (each)
REFERENCEColin McCahon database reference number CM001346.
Estimate $7,000 - $12,000
9
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 29
ALLEN MADDOX
Untitled (2000)
oil on canvas signed AM and dated 2.00 in marker pen verso910mm x 915mm
Estimate $15,000 - $20,000
10
30
ALLEN MADDOX
Untitled
oil on canvas circa 1976, Warwick Henderson Gallery label affixed verso 565mm x 565mm
Estimate $5,000 - $8,000
11
STEPHEN BAMBURY
Letters to Paul VIII
resin and graphite on wood panel signed S Bambury, dated 2001 and inscribed Fix: ¢ screws from top 50 & 500 and Letters To Paul (VIII), Stephen Bambury ©, resin and graphite on panel in marker pen verso; Jensen gallery label affixed verso 590mm x 590mm
Estimate $12,000 - $18,000
12
COLIN MCCAHON
In My Own Village
charcoal on paper signed McCahon, dated ‘71 and inscribed Caselberg in charcoal lower right; inscribed IN MY OWN / in my own village / VILLAGE I think there / I think there are / are / MORE Scarecrows / more scarecrows left / LEFT / THAN OTHER PEOPLE / than other people / my very bone ends / Burn in charcoal; inscribed Heat waves to heaven / Rising from the hearts / heat waves from heavens / rising from the Ruined hearts of three thousand homes / In my own village / I think there are more scarcrows left than other people / In my own village / In my OWN VILLAGE in charcoal and graphite verso 355mm x 270mm
NOTEThe text, by John Caselberg, is one of several haiku-like poems written in response to McCahon’s request for a suitable text for the second Gate series.
REFERENCEColin McCahon database reference number CM001512.
Estimate $18,000 - $25,000
13
32
ELIZABETH THOMSON
Ariel
hand-painted cast zinc on spray-coated panel 1100mm x 1100mm
Estimate $12,000 - $18,000
14
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 33
MAX GIMBLETT
Feast
two pot resin, gold leaf and graphite on quatrefoil shaped plywood signed © Max Gimblett, dated 2002/03, and inscribed “Feast” in marker pen middle verso635mm x 635mm
Estimate $12,000 - $18,000
15
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 35
JAN NIGRO
Peter and Sylvia Siddell
coloured pencil on paper signed Jan Nigro, dated ‘85 in pencil lower right; and inscribed Peter and Sylvia Siddell in pencil lower left 760mm x 560mm
PROVENANCEFrom the collection of the late Peter and Sylvia Siddell.
Estimate $1,500 - $2,500
16
SYLVIA SIDDELL
Sinbad Enters Underground River
acrylic on canvas signed Sylvia Siddell and dated ‘09 in brushpoint lower right 1000mm x 750mm
PROVENANCEFrom the collection of the late Peter and Sylvia Siddell.
Estimate $3,000 - $5,000
19
ROBERT ELLIS
Maungawhau/Mt Eden
mixed media on paper signed Robert Ellis, dated 2000, and inscribed Maungawhau/Mt Eden in ink lower left; certificate of valuation by Jane Sanders affixed verso 570mm x 500mm
PROVENANCEFrom the collection of the late Peter and Sylvia Siddell.
EXHIBITED Recent Works on Paper - Greer Twiss and Robert Ellis, Twiss Studio, Auckland, May 2000.
Estimate $2,000 - $3,000
18
MILAN MRKUSICH
Four Elements in Combination (Crimson),
from the Elements Series
oil and graphite on board signed Mrkusich and dated ‘66 in brushpoint lower right; signed Milan Mrkusich, dated 1966, and inscribed Four Elements in Combination (Crimson) in crayon verso; inscribed A.S.C.M. benefit auction in pencil verso; original Barry Lett Galleries Ltd. invoice, dated 31-5-68, affixed verso 285mm x 510mm
PROVENANCEFrom the collection of the late Peter and Sylvia Siddell.
Estimate $10,000 - $15,000
20
RICHARD KILLEEN
Combination
ink on paper signed Killeen and dated 20.10.75 in pencil lower right; Data Gallery label affixed verso 685mm x 350mm
PROVENANCEFrom the collection of the late Peter and Sylvia Siddell.
Estimate $1,000 - $2,000
17
20
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ROBIN WHITE
Porirua Harbour I
oil on canvas signed Robin White and dated ‘70 in brushpoint lower right; signed Robin White and inscribed Porirua Harbour I in marker pen upper edge verso; inscribed Porirua Harbour I in marker pen middle verso 765mm x 610mm
PROVENANCEFrom the collection of the late Peter and Sylvia Siddell.
Estimate $60,000 - $80,000
21
Robin White’s sleight-of-hand utterance, “What I paint
depends on where I am”,¹ in an article that she wrote for
an early issue of Art New Zealand, is perhaps the most-
conclusive and well-rounded summation of her practice
to ever be published. For, while her paintings are able to
effortlessly function as a distilled commentary about the
nation’s civic and social climate at the time in which they
were made, the focus of her practice was always dictated
by her immediate environment: the places and people that
she understood best. White’s landscape painting of the
1970s often conformed to a universal convention. Generally
presenting a supple, unpopulated hinterland nestled between
the foreshore and mountainous terrain, these images carry
with them an implicit criticism of modern New Zealand’s
taming of the landscape through ongoing urban sprawl.
Porirua 1 is a view across the shorelines of the Porirua
Harbour, as seen from the suburb of Elsdon. This was the
location of Mana College, the first school where White taught
after graduating from teachers’ college in 1968. Robin
White attended art school with the support of a Ministry of
Education studentship, which bonded her to teaching work
in return for covering her tuition fees and providing her with
a living stipend. While White has presented the viewer with
a landscape devoid of any human habitation, the landforms
that she has chosen to include carry with them an implicit
narrative that delves deep into the history of the region.
Porirua was originally planned as a satellite city of Wellington
in the 1940s that was to consist mainly of state housing, but
industrial development in the region led to an accelerated
growth in population and the eventual reclamation of a tract
of land on the southern tip of the Harbour. Porirua 1 appears
as a double-format image where two separate compositions
are sandwiched one on top of the other. However, those
familiar with the topography of the area will recognise that
the two distinctive strips of land – Whitirea Park reserve
in the foreground and the distinctive hill shoreline of
Plimmerton behind – would have been ideally observed
from the corner of Wineera Drive, at the edge of the
reclaimed land.
It was during her first year in Porirua that White learned to
stretch canvas and working on this new substrate immediately
changed the way in which she painted. The soft, absorbent
surface of the canvas dampened her approach to laying
down paint. It was also around this time that White began
to pay specific and careful attention to the way in which her
images were assembled or, in her words, “the feeling for the
structure of painting, the idea of contrast, how a painting’s
put together”.² White’s three-year tenure at Mana College
was a formative period in her career that saw her construct
images that relied more on their own internal logic than on
a desire to recreate a particular vantage. In Porirua 1, there
is a form of foreshortening at play whereby the expanses of
sea between the landforms are extended and reshaped so
that they are able to be present within the image. Further,
subtly crafted shading has been applied to the very lip of
the landforms so they recede into space in a manner that
is not governed by the rules of perspective. Porirua 1 is
an exemplary embodiment of White’s new image-making
strategies which positioned her, along with Don Binney, at the
forefront of a second wave of modern painting that emerged
in the 1970s and sought to update the themes propagated by
regionalist New Zealand painting in the 1930s.
CHARLES NINOW
¹ White, Robin. “Art and conservation are synonymous”, Art New Zealand Spring
1977, p.40.
² Taylor, Alistair. “Perspective: Robin White talks to Alister Taylor”, in Alister
Taylor and Deborah Coddington (ed.), Robin White: New Zealand Painter
(Martinborough: Alister Taylor, 1981), p.10.
38
PETER SIDDELL
Untitled (Evensong 2)
oil on canvas signed Peter Siddell and dated 2009 in brushpoint lower left 900mm x 1490mm
PROVENANCEFrom the collection of the late Peter and Sylvia Siddell.
Estimate $70,000 - $100,000
22
Evensong has a religious meaning as an Anglican Church service
of prayers, psalms and canticles held in the evening. This label
fits the mood and time of day captured by Peter Siddell’s painting
and was probably given to it as a title after the work had evolved
and taken on its present appearance – for the work was on the
easel for some time in various stages of resolution. The image
of a small chapel by twilight with the sun setting over the water
nearby encourages thoughts about the passing of time, the end
of human life and its aftermath. Significantly, it was among the
last major paintings made by Siddell after he had been diagnosed
with a terminal illness and knew that his own life was coming to
an end. While the subject matter of a chapel near the sea occurs
in his earlier works, the reflective mood and elegiac message
are distinctive to this canvas and a related second version with
the same title. Even the detail for which he is famous has been
reduced to enhance the effect of fading light. Indeed the main
forms of the chapel and surrounding cypress trees were blocked
in broadly before any detail was introduced.
The lit window of the chapel in its Gothic elegance is a pivot
of the composition and important for its symbolic meanings:
the presence of light in encompassing darkness is a comforting
symbol of hope for those of Christian belief in the resurrection
and eternal life – especially in this context of a Gothic chapel.
While Siddell’s paintings are noted for their emptiness of
people and their silence, here we can imagine the sound of a
psalm being sung and its cadences drifting in the air across the
peaceful landscape. In the related version, a marble angel in the
graveyard points heavenwards as a sign of hope and is a motif
often found in funerary art. Although absent in this version, the
meaning is implied. Siddell creates a mood that is contemplative
and almost sacred in feeling.
As usual with Peter Siddell, although the painting appears
recognisable as a specific place, it is a composite of parts that
did not exist in their present relationship. The funerary chapel
was based on one in Waikumete Cemetery, distant from the coast,
but at home here in a new setting. For the artist, the effect and
meaning he wanted were more important than topographical
accuracy to a particular view. The setting sun reflected in the
water recalls Turner, an artist he admired for his atmospheric
effects and lighting. By calling attention to the end of the day
with its promise of renewal at dawn, Siddell draws an analogy
with nature for the hope that death will be followed cyclically
by new life. The predominance of warm hues tends to give the
painting a positive mood that counters its otherwise sombre tone.
He suffuses the commonplace objects and setting with a palpable
sense of melancholy and mystery. It is the reflective mood of
the work that casts our thoughts inwards and away from exterior
appearances. Evensong is at once personal in its relevance to
Peter Siddell’s own life but universal in its address to wider
issues that we must all confront of faith and hope in the face of
our mortality. The importance of the subject to him is indicated
by the fact that he returned to it more than once: something very
rare in his practice as a painter.
MICHAEL DUNN
40
COLIN MCCAHON
The Lark’s Song
watercolour, pastel, and charcoal on paper
inscribed
Ka tahi tii. ka rua tii. / Ka noho mai te patii te
patoo re. Ka rau na. / Ka noho te kiwi. Ka
poo he wai Tai tai / to pi to paa Ka hui
a mai. Ka toko / te rangi. Kai ana
te whetu. Te marama / i te rangi. I te
papa takina. E hui / tarere. Ko te tio e
rere. Ra runga ra / tope Kapeka. E hue
kaurere turakina te / arero o te rangi Kotare
wiwi wawa keke. Te / manu i tau noo / tuu e
in charcoal
1500mm x 600mm
PROVENANCEPurchased from Barry Lett Gallery, Auckland, 1972. From the collection of the late Sylvia and Peter Siddell.
Estimate $70,000 - $100,000
23
The body of text works made by McCahon during 1969,
throughout his first 12 months at his Muriwai studio, is
an important forebear for both the artist’s environmentally
focused Necessary Protection series and also the text
paintings that the artist would make in the last years of his
career where he transcribed passages directly from the Old
Testament. Prior to 1969, the artist had experimented briefly
with Maori motifs, most notably with his Koru paintings
of 1962, which were formal studies that reflected on the
traditional koru form, and then again in 1965 with his
studies for a proposed mural at Caltex’s Auckland offices, in
which the letterforms of the word ‘Caltex’ were formed from
stylised koru motifs. However, it was not until moving into his
Muriwai studio that McCahon engaged seriously with Maori
subject matter. Gordon Brown explains that the genus of this
development within McCahon’s practice was two pronged and
drawn from his personal life.¹ The first event of significance
was his daughter Victoria, who was married to a Maori
husband, giving birth to his grandson Matiu. The second
event was his daughter Catherine bringing Matire Kereama’s
book, The Tail of the Fish, to his attention. It was in this
book that her poem, The Lark’s Song, was published.
The poem is recited within the work and describes the
gentle descent of native birds from the sky to their places
of rest, where they will spend the evening. It describes their
twilight song that permeates their surroundings and speaks
of the stars looking out and the moon keeping watch. The
words of the The Lark’s Song form a soothing lullaby and,
by McCahon’s hand, they flow with a graceful rhythm that
denies the possibility that any turmoil could be buried
within their meaning. This is the result of a conscious effort
on McCahon’s part to allow the words to function not as
legible text but rather as repeated sound. In transcribing the
poem, McCahon inserted breaks between words and altered
and extended the words themselves in order to temper the
cadence of the passage. Rather than simply overlay text
onto image, McCahon gave the words a palpable, material
presence that reverberates throughout the composition.
Central to The Lark’s Song is McCahon’s recognition of
the binding and vitally important relationship between the
tangata whenua and the New Zealand landscape. While
McCahon had dealt with the issue of New Zealand’s national
identity throughout his career, notably in his religious works
of the late 1940s such as The Promised Land (held in the
collection of Auckland Art Gallery), the subject was always
approached through a pakeha frame of reference, using
Christian references and depictions of Western objects
and dwellings. By rendering the words of Kareama so that
they fade in and out of the soft, white cloud forms in the
sky, McCahon presented them as an atmospheric force: an
essential lifeblood to the New Zealand environment.
The profound importance that McCahon placed on his
discovery of Kareama’s poem was compounded by the fact
that, in the same year, the artist completed another larger
work based on the same poem, using two found doors as
a substrate. Sharing the same title, this work is now held
in the collection of Auckland Art Gallery. In this later
painting, McCahon chose to add one further line of text after
Kareama’s words: “Can you hear me, St Francis?” St Francis
of Assisi was the patron saint of the environment – and the
addition of this sentence to the later work suggests his use
of Kareama’s text was motivated by environmental concerns.
McCahon readily engaged with environmental issues within
his Necessary Protection series, stating in a catalogue
that accompanied his first exhibition of the series that the
purpose of the showing was to “draw attention to the many
conservation issues facing this country”.² The Lark’s Song
predates the Necessary Protection series by a number of
years and, thus, stands as an important early example of the
artist’s concerns about industrial and residential development
of New Zealand’s landscape. Further, the use of Karamea’s
text showed that McCahon was not concerned just with the
depletion of natural habitats but also with the alienation of
the ‘people of the land’. Thus, The Lark’s Song embodies
a significant shift in McCahon’s concept of New Zealand’s
national identity, updated to reflect contemporary challenges
facing New Zealand society.
CHARLES NINOW1 Brown, Gordon, H., Colin McCahon: Artist (Auckland: Reed, 1984), p.157.
2 Ibid, p.164.
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 43
RALPH HOTERE
Sangro
watercolour on paper signed Hotere, dated ‘78 and inscribed Avignon in pencil lower right455mm x 320mm
PROVENANCEProvenance: From the collection of the late Peter and Sylvia Siddell.
Estimate $12,000 - $18,000
24 ROBIN WHITE
Bottle Creek, Paremata
pencil on paper signed R. White, dated ‘69 and inscribed Bottle Creek, Paremata in pencil lower edge370mm x 250mm
PROVENANCEFrom the collection of the late Peter and Sylvia Siddell.
Estimate $4,000 - $6,000
25 MICHEL TUFFERY
Fa’a Samoa/Fa’a Palagi
mixed media print, artist’s proof signed Michel Tuffery, dated ‘90, and inscribed Fa’a Samoa/Fa’a Palagi in pencil lower edge1300mm x 610mm
PROVENANCEFrom the collection of the late Peter and Sylvia Siddell.
Estimate $1,800 - $2,500
26
44
RITA ANGUS
Portrait of a Maori Girl
watercolour on paper signed Rita Angus in brushpoint lower right310mm x 240mm
PROVENANCEPurchased by Joyce Tolfree from an exhibition, likely at Roy Parsons’ gallery and bookshop in Wellington during the 1950s. Gifted to the present owner.
Estimate $12,000 - $18,000
27
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 45
FRANCES HODGKINS
Venetian Lagoon
watercolour on paper signed Frances Hodgkins in brushpoint lower right; inscribed Venetian Lagoon (9) in pencil verso; inscribed in another hand Hodgkins, Frances Mary, Venetian Lagoon c. 1921, watercolour 41.9 x 45.8cm, Helen Stewart Collection (given to Louise Ryan (niece), probably Martigues (The Venice of France) where the artist stayed in 1921, Shown in the 1928 Annual Exhibition in pen on backing board425mm x 455mm
28 PROVENANCEFrom the collection of the artist, Helen Stewart, gifted to the artist’s neice Louise Ryan and passed by descent to the present owner. Helen Stewart and Frances Hodgkins exhibited works together at the 1928 Annual Exhibition where Stewart won a prize and spent the prize money on the acquisition of this work. Helen Stewart may have met Frances Hodgkins at the Acadamie Colarossi in Paris, as Helen studied there and was in London and Paris until 1928. Frances Hodgkins was one of the first female teachers at the Acadamie Colarossi.
Estimate $35,000 - $45,000
46
TONY FOMISON
The Veil of Saint Veronica - After An Old
Engraving of a Relic at the Vatican
oil on cotton stretched over card in found frame signed Tony Fomison, dated 7. 4. 73 - Good Friday 1973 and coloured in on 16. 5. 73, and inscribed The Veil of Saint Veronica ~ after an old engraving of a relic at the Vatican in brushpoint on frame; inscribed This frame is old fashioned telephone wall bracket / from the dining from of 10 Papanui Road (forgotten who) of / Papanui Rd, (pulled down last year). / Cloth stretched on photographer’s cards & / prepared…one heavy saturation coat Harns / gelatine (at 2 way between size) glue proportions; one / coat off white undercoat finally 2 coats of main / separation ( separg) … white. The black lamp (black) started 7.4.7… / Sepia finished on Easter Eve 20-21.4.73, Good Friday. / Glazed in on 16.5.73. Rose Madder in a little… / bit Mars brown mixed with a little Rose Madder in ink on label verso190mm x 140mm
PROVENANCEPainted over an Easter weekend 1973 in the presence of the current owner. Gifted by the artist to the present owner shortly thereafter.
Estimate $18,000 - $25,000
29
There is no biblical reference either to Saint Veronica
or, conversely, to the Veil of Saint Veronica; however, the
legend surrounding the inception and existence of the Veil is
inextricably linked to the biblical retelling of the crucifixion
of Jesus Christ. It is said that, while Jesus was making his
way along the Via Dolorosa (translated: ‘way of suffering’)
to Calvary where he was crucified, he encountered Saint
Veronica who reached forward and wiped the sweat from his
face. Miraculously, after making contact with Jesus’ face,
the cloth she used was found to bear his image. Unlike the
Shroud of Turin, which was discovered much later, the Veil
of Saint Veronica did not picture a negative imprint of his
face but, rather, a fully resolved image and thus could be the
result only of divine intervention.
As it is based on an artist’s impression of the Veil, Fomison’s
The Veil of Saint Veronica – after an engraving of a relic at
the Vatican, is focused less on the extraordinary nature of the
event itself and more on the myth and conjecture surrounding
the artefact’s continued existence. It is said that, until 1527,
upon the Sack of Rome where mutinous troops bombarded
the city, the Veil was held in the Old St Peter’s Basilica in
the Vatican. After this time, there is no common consensus
on where the Veil has been held or whether or not it is still
in existence. Nonetheless, even though Pope Urban VIII
banned the act of depicting the Veil in 1629 and supposedly
destroyed all existing copies, there are now six copies in
existence that are claimed to be either the original or direct
copies of the original. These are all from varying origins and
all bear the distinctive, three-pronged silhouette (outlining a
beard and long, hanging hair either side of the face) that is
seen in Fomison’s rendering.
Fomison’s painting, The Veil of Saint Veronica – after an
engraving of a relic at the Vatican, is itself based on an image
stated to be a reproduction and it embodies a deliberate
act to perpetuate a long tradition of replicating an image
purported to be of divine provenance: a tradition that has
seen refined conventions emerge from different geographic
regions (while based on an engraving from the Vatican,
Fomsion’s image conforms to the Spanish convention which
excludes the crown of thorns and depicts Christ without
facial injuries). Rather than demonstrate that Fomison held
personal Christian beliefs, The Veil of Saint Veronica – after
an engraving of a relic at the Vatican sees the artist reflect
on the social function of religion, finding his footing in the
Marxist adage that religion is the ‘opium of the People’.¹
While Marx’s theory relating to religion was fundamentally
tied to a critique of the capitalist economic system, at its
heart was the observation that religion was a human construct
that provided society with a means of escapism.
Outside of the images of the Veil that claim to have some
degree of authenticity, the image of the Veil has appeared
throughout Western art production of the last six centuries,
including in the practice of Fomison’s contemporary
Colin McCahon, as a signifier for divine abilities of a higher
power. To Fomison, the pervasive presence of the image in
Western cultural production, in spite of the fact that it has no
basis in written history, was palpable evidence of the human
belief that the challenges associated with survival on earth
had some greater purpose.
Charles Ninow
¹ Marx, Karl (February 1844), “Introduction”. A Contribution to the Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Unpublished during the writer’s lifetime.
48
BILL HAMMOND
At the Flood
acrylic on board, three-panel altarpiece construction signed W. D. Hammond, dated 2004 and inscribed At the Flood in brushpoint central panel; signed W. D. Hammond and dated 2004 in brushpoint right panel verso; inscribed 26 Canterbury St, Lyttleton and Maimeri acrylic paint, Maimeri mat waterbased varnish (671), cedar frame, kauri ply, Maimeri gesso in marker pen central panel verso 990mm x 430mm (left and right panels); 990mm x 870mm (central panel); 990mm x 1730mm (overall)
PROVENANCEPurchased by the current owners from Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland, 2004.
Estimate $180,000 - $220,000
30
Hammond’s At the Flood confounds and seduces viewers
with an alchemical concoction that is partly Christian, partly
weird science and mostly Pagan poetry. The title immediately
alludes to the biblical deluge – and Hammond has called
forth a mossy, dripping world in which it has quite likely
been raining for forty days and forty nights. Likewise, the
painting’s format has its origins in the Christian traditions of
European art – multi-panelled altarpieces in which the side
panels were painted on both sides so that the painting could
effectively be closed, increasing the sense of reverence for
the contents when it was opened. Hammond’s lavish use of
gold binds him irrevocably to the world of icons and worship,
and the shimmering, incandescent winged creatures he
depicts might very well be angels.
Except that they’re not. These bird figures plumb the depths
of history – invoking the haughty, all-seeing eye of hawk-
headed Horus, or the long, elegant beak of ibis-headed
Thoth. The heraldic profiles of Hammond’s birds are instantly
resonant with Egyptian dynastic art. But even Ancient
Egyptian hybrid deities were plainly men’s bodies with bird-
headed masks, as were Hammond’s earlier bird figures in
paintings like Watching for Buller (1994). In At the Flood,
however, Hammond’s avian creations have become lithe and
fluid, with bodies that curl and twist like sea horses through
his primordial, painterly soup.
Many of them eschew limbs altogether; their plump chests
merely taper off into sinuous coils and, like tadpoles, they
could be creatures in a state of becoming, hinting at endless
potential metamorphoses.
Humans were conspicuous by their absence in Hammond’s
Buller paintings; birds were the only life forms in a land that
time forgot. But there are people of sorts in At the Flood,
although you have to open the front panels to see them.
Perhaps that is the sacred secret the painting holds – the
evidence that our ancestors are equally implicated in this
mythical-evolutionary tableau. The humanoids have enlarged
heads, hinting at some sort of telepathic capability. Like
the birds, they have golden profiles, and the two species
are united by their vegetative tattoos. Each of the creatures
is delicately adorned with a filigree of ferns, shoots and
seed pods. Whether these emerald traceries are intrinsic to
their being, or decorative additions, one can only guess. But
Hammond’s viridian gene pool cuts and splices human, avian,
hippocampus and plant matter. But this is not a hideous
scene of monstrous deformity or mad science dreamed up
by William Burroughs, nor is it a warning of the dangers of
genetic engineering. Hammond’s world of changelings and
chimeras is a wondrous utopia of meditative calm. Perhaps
this unrelenting palette of green was inspired by the Emerald
Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, a legendary alchemical
text which combined the esoteric knowledges of Egypt and
Greece. Or perhaps Hammond is channelling Hildegard von
Bingen’s notion of Viriditas, which equates moral truth with
the colour green – the divine force of nature. Either way,
Hammond conjures a zone of unimaginable elegance and
timelessness: certainly a space worthy of our reverence.
TESSA LAIRD
52
LOUISE HENDERSON
Untitled (Three Figures)
oil on canvas inscribed Thomas Lücke in pencil upper left verso 855mm x 950mm
PROVENANCEGifted to the present owner by a friend of the artists, Thomas Lücke.
Estimate $35,000 - $45,000
31
This study of three female figures was completed by Louise
Henderson upon her return from Paris in 1953, where she
had studied under the tutelage of Jean Metzinger, then in
the final years of his life. Metzinger was acknowledged as a
leading theorist of cubism and, together with Albert Gleizes,
he co-wrote the first published treatise on cubist practice,
Du Cubisme, the first edition of which was printed in 1911.
Having arrived slightly after the height of the original ‘Paris
School’ – a group of influential modern painters who lived
and practised in Paris during the 1940s – Henderson was
undoubtedly influenced also by the new approaches to
figuration that emerged from Paris in the 1950s: notably, the
practices of lyrical abstractionists such as Francis Picabia,
Jean René Bazaine and Serge Poliakoff.
The problem of distance and isolation has been much
discussed in relation to the development of modern painting
within New Zealand. While a distinct, modernist shift
occurred in New Zealand in the decade prior to when Untitled
(Three Figures) was made, the early works of McCahon,
Woollaston and Lusk were all informed by images in books
– a medium that does not allow the viewer to experience
the scale and physicality of an artwork. Henderson’s time in
Paris was brief; however, it allowed the artist to step outside
of the frame of reference that informed other New Zealand
practitioners in the 1950s and thus, importantly, her work
stands apart from the linear development of New Zealand’s
art history. After her return from Paris, and under the
influence of her mentor John Weeks, Henderson was driven to
take up the brush in a more confident and academic manner
and began producing cubist-style works that led to a show of
paintings and drawings held at the Auckland City Art Gallery
in 1953 that would mark her as a figurehead of New Zealand
abstract art.
The cubist movement began a revolution away from the
traditional concept of the painting as a reflection of nature
and questioned common techniques of the time to create an
intelligent and diverse range of new painting ideals. These
new concepts removed the need to render the image by the
use of techniques to achieve a three-dimensional illusion
and, in their stead, inspired the practice of creating an
image that would commend the two-dimensional qualities
that already existed on a canvas surface. Abstraction
would not have the same analytical impact with today’s
audience without an acknowledgement of this reformation
of painting culture.
The practices of other painters who had engaged with cubism
in New Zealand during the 1950s – such as Colin McCahon
and, to a lesser extent, John Weeks – took their lead from
the analytic cubism propagated by earlier cubist works
such as Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase of
1912, which aimed to recreate the scattered and disjointed
experience of viewing objects and movement in real time.
The strength of Henderson’s practice is that her use of
cubist principles makes her image more direct. Henderson is
concerned more with the flat pictorial plane, subtly rendering
areas to give the suggestion of form. Indeed, aside from its
novel approach to figuration, Untitled (Three Figures) exhibits
a deeply intelligent, material sensitivity. The knowingly
applied trapezoid shapes of orange, blue and chalky turquoise
speak of an artist who is intimately ‘at one’ with her craft.
52
COLIN MCCAHON
Truth from the King Country, Load Bearing
Structures 4
acrylic on board signed Colin McCahon, dated 78, and inscribed Truth from the King Country, (4) Load Bearing Structures in brushpoint middle verso195mm x 245mm
Estimate $50,000 - $70,000
32
In a manner that is reminiscent of Colin McCahon’s seminal
early work On Building Bridges of 1952, which was made
during the artist’s period of engagement with analytic cubism
and presented a view of the Canterbury landscape seen
through and obscured by the support struts of a metallic
structure, Truth from the King Country: Load Bearing
Structures 4 once again shapes our view of the landscape
with a man-made structure – in this case, a structure of the
artist’s own making. The prominent black Tau form described
in this image finds its origins in the Necessary Protection
works which McCahon made while working from his studio in
Muriwai in the early 1970s. Initially, as the title suggests,
these works were born out of the artist’s concerns about
the gradual gentrification and pollution of the west coast
landscape; he stated: “I am painting about what is still
there and what I can still see before the sky turns black
with soot and the sea becomes a slowly heaving rubbish
tip”.¹ The series would evolve to have a much-wider-reaching
relevance as McCahon shaped the discourse into a proposal
that all human actions are part of a path towards spiritual
enlightenment. The Tau form found its origins in the negative
space that was formed by the two cliff faces, one on either
side of Muriwai Beach, as described by McCahon’s drawings
of the area. McCahon imbued the form with a symbolic
relevance – the horizontal bar represented a divine entity and
the vertical bar represented man’s path through the physical
world – and it became a prominent feature of his practice
that he would use exclusively for a two-year period in the
early 1970s.
Unlike the landscapes of McCahon’s earlier career, Truth
from the King Country: Load Bearing Structures 4 was not
a reaction to the artist’s immediate physical surroundings.
Rather, this work saw McCahon engage with the written
history of the geographical region pictured within the work.
The King Country was named after the Maori King movement,
which took force in the mid-1800s and sought to establish
the region as a sovereign state, free from the control of the
British monarchy. As a result, the region was the site of
ongoing conflict between Maori and Pakeha settlers until
1867 when economic difficulties affecting the inhabitants of
the King Country led to a peace agreement between the two
parties.
The Truth from the King Country series was painted in the
wake of the fallout that followed the passing into law of
the Treaty of Waitangi Act of 1975, which established the
Waitangi Tribunal. When the Tau motif was related to the
ongoing conflict between the rival ideologies of Pakeha and
the tangata whenua, McCahon found that it had a new and
poignant relevance. Yet, unlike the works that McCahon had
painted at the start of the decade, the Truth from the King
Country series does not present the viewer with a situation of
hopeless decline.
In the years before he painted the Truth from the King
Country series, McCahon had all but abandoned the Tau form
and had primarily been making black and white paintings
featuring words and linear imagery suspended in dark pools
of negative space. In contrast to this dark shift, Truth from
the King Country: Load Bearing Structures 4, with its use of
burning orange-yellow, is a light at the end of a tenebrous
tunnel. It presents a sunrise over a horizon. While Truth from
the King Country: Load Bearing Structures 4 reflects upon an
ongoing conflict, the proposition that equilibrium will one day
be reached is what lies at its heart. In this work, McCahon
propagates his hope that a load-bearing structure – a set of
governing principles – will eventually lead to a resolution.
Charles Ninow
1 Brown, Gordon, H., Colin McCahon: Artist (Auckland: Reed, 1984), p.164.
54
MICHAEL PAREKOWHAI
Driving Mr. Albert
rabbit, polyurethane, two-pot automotive paint
1635mm x 255mm x 255mm
ILLUSTRATED Lett, Michael and Ryan Moore (ed.), Michael Parekowhai (Auckland: Michael Lett Publishing, 2007). p. 89, 163
EXHIBITEDPreviously on long term loan to Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatu, Nelson.
Estimate $20,000 - $30,000
33
In a short, unpublished piece of prose written to accompany
Michael Parekowhai’s exhibition Driving Mr. Albert in 2005,
the artist’s sister Cushla Parekowhai explains that the title
for the series of works was derived from the title of a novel
by Michael Paterniti called Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip across
America with Einstein’s Brain. The book tells the story of
a road trip across America with the pathologist Thomas
Stoltz Harvey, who performed the autopsy on Albert Einstein
at Princeton University after his death in 1955 and who
removed the brain of the subject without the permission
of the family. Paterniti spent three months sectioning the
brain to produce 12 sets of slides and then retained the
remains which were kept “floating in a Tupperware bowl of
formaldehyde for over forty years”.¹
Reading as though it has been plucked from the pages of
a science fiction novel, a tale of such brazen disregard
for medical ethics almost lacks any gravitas – the true
implications of such an act are beyond the comprehension of
most. However, Cushla Parekowhai grounds Paterniti’s story
in a local context by referencing the now-infamous Greenlane
Heart Library, uncovered in 2002. Greenlane Hospital
revealed that, since 1950, it had harvested and collected
1,350 hearts for research purposes without the consent of
the deceased patients or of their families. Most of the organs
were taken from infants and children, the majority of whom
had died from congenital heart disease. Like Einstein’s brain,
these organs were collected for the purpose of scientific
research, supposedly, for the greater good.
In referencing these two cases of misconduct – one American
folklore and one local history – Parekowhai’s intention was
to perpetuate a discourse that was focused not on the events
themselves but, rather, on the organisational structures that
allowed such events to take place. At the heart of Driving
Mr. Albert is a dialogue about the tenuous relationship
between the tangata whenua and nationalised health care:
the tendency of bureaucratic process to impinge on the Maori
insistence that “the deceased be given up by the authorities
intact and as quickly as possible”.² In Driving Mr. Albert,
Parekowhai offers this conflict between two tenets as a
wide-reaching model for the way in which tangata whenua
have been forced to adapt their customs in order to conform
to an imposed system of governance.
The body of works to which Driving Mr. Albert belongs
was originally presented en masse in Parekowhai’s 2005
exhibition of the same title. The works were of equal height.
Each confronted the viewer at eye level and each presented
a taxidermied rabbit immortalised in a different pose. Some
offered themselves to the viewer willingly, while others
cowered and faced the wall. The high-gloss pedestals were
cast from the naturally balanced form of the radiata pine
tree, a species introduced to New Zealand for commercial
uses. These pedestals were painted in an array of hues and,
in his text in Parekowhai’s monograph, Justin Paton referred
to these trunks as a “colour-coded” forest.³
Taxidermied rabbit hides have a broad-reaching presence
within Parekowhai’s practice and appear in a number his
key works – The Barefoot Potter Boys Brigade (1999),
Craig Keller (from The Beverly Hills Gun Club series, 2000)
and Roebuck Jones and the Cuniculus Kid (2001). Their
continued presence emphasises the lack of value attached
to the rabbit, a pest introduced to the New Zealand
landscape somewhat earlier than was the radiata pine. In
the greater taxonomic order that pertains to New Zealand’s
environment, the rabbit stands on the lowest rung and, in the
Driving Mr. Albert series, it plays the role of an underclass
coalesced into an arrangement that has irrevocably changed
the nature of its existence.
CHARLES NINOW
¹ Parekowhai, Cushla. Driving Mr. Albert (2005), unpublished.
² Ibid.
³ Paton, Justin. “The Big Ask: 20 questions about Michael Parekowhai” in
Michael Lett and Ryan Moore (eds.), Michael Parekowhai (Auckland: Michael Lett
Publishing, 2007), p. V–XV.
56
CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE
No Koora te Cigaretti, A Portrait of Mihipeka
Wairama, Tuhourangi
oil on canvas signed C. F. Goldie and dated 1915 in brushpoint lower left; signed C. F. Goldie and inscribed No Koora te Cigaretti, No. 1, Sale price £13.13.0 in ink on original artist’s label affixed verso 240mm x 190mm
Estimate $170,000 - $200,000
34
Mihipeka Wairama was a favourite model for Goldie between
1912 and 1915 when he was at the peak of his powers as
a portraitist of old-time Maori. Her striking facial features,
heavily lined but still handsome, her wonderful chin moko
and her splendid head of hair made her an irresistible subject
for him. Her colourful history as a survivor of the Tarawera
eruption linked her to the Buried Village of Te Wairoa and the
tragic events there in 1886 when the Pink and White Terraces
were destroyed. When he met her in 1908 at Whakarewarewa,
she was living with other Tuhourangi people near Rotorua,
displaced from her ancestral home and dependent for a
living on the tourist trade. Now a mature woman, a kuia,
with stories to tell of her early life and its tragic beginnings,
she was willing to sit for Goldie no doubt for a small fee.
He painted two versions of No Koora Te Cigaretti, the earlier
dated 1912 and now in Adelaide, and the present example
dated 1915. Their compositions are almost the same but the
Adelaide version is unfinished in the corners of the canvas
and may have been intended to be presented in an oval
frame. He also painted another fine portrait of her in near
profile, dated 1912 (private collection) without the cigarette.
All three paintings show her in head-and-shoulders format
set close to the picture frame and dressed in a woven blanket
draped over a blouse with a scarf around her neck.
The present work shows her facial features full frontal in
sharp, meticulous detail. Her ear pendant of greenstone is
painted with great care to bring out its hard, shiny surface
and contrast it with her softer, textured skin. Conveying
the tactile qualities of the subject matter and the contrasts
between skin, hair, blanket and moko are critical to Goldie’s
mission as a painter. In accordance with his French academic
training, he wants to make her appear real and for the work to
be a fully finished study, accurate in every detail. Everything
is resolved, nothing left to chance. There is also careful
attention to lighting and modelling of the features. He uses
a pronounced chiaroscuro that casts her right cheek and
shoulder into shadow where detail is reduced, but where, too,
the white of the cigarette stands out against the shadowy skin
behind it. Each touch of paint is placed carefully with the
virtuosity of a master in command of his craft.
The title No Koora Te Cigaretti draws attention to her smoking
and introduces an element of controversy. Loosely translated,
it means ‘cigarettes are no good’ in the sense that she would
prefer something stronger, namely tobacco in a pipe. The
habit of smoking like that of drinking alcohol was introduced
to Maori by the European settlers much to their disadvantage
when they became addicted. Both men and women indulged
at a time when it was rare for middle-class European women
to smoke or drink heavily. Goldie seems to see some humour
in her addiction though the portrait is sympathetic rather
than judgmental and her dignity is preserved. She is shown
at a time of change when traditional Maori life and customs
were threatened by European values and adjustments had
to be made. Goldie was well aware that he was recording a
vanishing way of life and tended to dwell on the nostalgic
aspects of his subjects. This explains the reflective nature
of Mihipeka’s expression with eyes half closed as if thinking
about times past rather than about the present.
MICHAEL DUNN
58
BILL HAMMOND
Sea Legs
watercolour on paper signed W. D. Hammond, dated 1995 and inscribed Sea Legs in brushpoint lower right900mm x 1220mm
Estimate $65,000 - $85,000
35
Painted in 1995, Bill Hammond’s Sea Legs is a hauntingly
beautiful example of the artist’s fascination with birdlife,
which began to tentatively grace his paintings from the early
’90s after a transformative trip to Enderby Island in 1989. As
an archipelago of the New Zealand sub-Antarctic islands with
no permanent human inhabitants, the Auckland Islands are
a safe haven for wildlife and an important breeding site for
a number of endemic birds. Hammond’s visit to the islands
was the catalyst for his searing vision of a ‘birdland’, which
he has sought to populate ever since with a mythological race
of ornithological creatures, the genesis of which is readily
apparent in Sea Legs.
Suggestive of brevity, fragility and the sheer beauty of the
natural world, Sea Legs displays a masterful handling of
watercolour and clearly illustrates Laurence Aberhart’s
appellation of Hammond as “the pre-eminent painter of
surface”. ¹ The paper has been stained with a series of dark
violets, inky blues and charcoal-grey hues that canvas the
work so that it virtually hums with a raw dynamism. In true
Hammond form, however, it is an energy that is intimately
tempered by an elegiac and meditative charm. Sea Legs is
blanketed in fine striations of modulated colour that evoke
divisions of sky, horizon line, land and sea, while thin
rivulets of pigment dribble and run down the expanse of the
painting. Dripping tendrils of paint are as much a hallmark
of Hammond’s artistic repertoire as are his bird creatures and
can be seen running and weaving through the majority of his
paintings.
A starless, cloudy sky presides over the wet and windswept
land of Sea Legs. Misty squalls buffet the terrain while the
sun struggles to pierce the cloud, carving a brief patch of
blanched sky in the middle distance. A series of five inverted
waves roll simultaneously in and rush out, their highly
stylised forms and curling filigree crests conjuring the work
of Japanese woodblock artists such as the revered Katsushika
Hokusai. Reminiscent of sheets of corrugated iron, the frozen
sea retreats on a sharp diagonal, drawing the spectator into
the centre of the painting where a dark, billowing sky is seen
weeping ribbons of silver.
Signs of domesticity grace the foreground with the sea
carrying in a small yet staunch bulldog and the beginnings
of a russet-coloured velveteen chaise longue, which casually
disappears off the edge of the paper, suggesting that more
domestic flotsam abounds. On the left of the painting, a
lone shag is seen perched atop a jagged piece of rock and
staring resolutely out to sea. Neatly circumscribed within an
ornamental cabinet that is complete with an identification
label, the shag faces off against an encroaching tide of
human invasion and settlement. The bird remains aloof,
protected and distant, and yet at the same time it is a
covetable commodity that has been ostensibly purchased,
owned and possessed. This is Hammond at his best, drawing
commentary that is resonant with suggestion, allusion and
possibility while offering it to the viewer in an enticing,
lyrical manner. Like the individual pieces of a puzzle, the
three figurative elements of glass-caged bird, bulldog and
chaise longue come together to weave a poetic narrative that
eloquently speaks of a rich, personal experience, historical
exploration and settlement, and the mythic possibilities of a
hybridised ornithological race.
JEMMA FIELD
¹ Aberhart, Laurence, “Welcome to Bill’s Bar”, in Jennifer Hay (ed.), Bill
Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning (Christchurch Art Gallery, 2007), p.12–15.
60
RALPH HOTERE
Black Painting
acrylic on canvas signed Hotere, dated 69 and inscribed Black Painting in brushpoint verso; inscribed cat no. 30 and $150 in pencil on stretcher1115mm x 915mm
PROVENANCEPurchased by the current owners directly from the artist, circa 1974.
Estimate $80,000 - $120,000
36
Like musical chords suspended in the silence of darkness, a
lyrical mysticism exudes from the boards of Hotere’s Black
Painting series, which were to form the foundations of
Hotere’s artistic career. Black Painting (1969) is an exquisite
example from this series, on which the artist focused for two
years from 1968 to 1969. In contrast to the majority of works
in this sequence, which were painted with brolite lacquer on
hardboard to eliminate any trace of brushwork, Hotere here
rejects the luminous and reflective quality of the lacquer in
favour of a matt finish. Rendered in acrylic on canvas, the
circle of fine illuminated threads of colour glimmers against
the black background. The all-encompassing scale of the
painting, offers an altar-like quality to the piece.
Hotere’s practice has frequently been compared with the
hybrid Maori Catholic upbringing of the artist. Hotere was
steeped in Catholic liturgy, theology, sacramentalism,
mysticism and iconography, and Latin texts as a young boy
and his works carry an intrinsic spiritual quality, which is
redolent throughout his oeuvre. His early paintings from this
series feature a recurring cross. In Black Painting (1969), we
see a departure from these linear works, yet the focal point of
the painting remains constant, resembling an altarpiece, or
illuminated halo: the circle becoming a metaphor for God or
the universe.
During the 1960s, Hotere was greatly inspired by his
travels to Europe and the South of France, where he resided
for several months. Living near to the monastery, Hotere
frequently visited the Dominican Chapel of the Rosary in
Vence, whose ecclesiastical designs by Matisse were the
antithesis of the stark, unadorned church of his home town,
Mitimiti. Formally, his black paintings are an inversion of
Matisse’s chapel drawings, yet they share a similar sensory
‘vibration’, which fills their surrounds.
Hotere’s piece also reveals his ongoing affinity with nature.
At this time, it was likely that Hotere would have been
influenced by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s scientific
studies on the form and patterning of nature, which were
widely discussed by artists in London in the early 1960s.
The repetition and patterning of fine lines, central to Black
Painting (1969), echo the rhythm of the isobars or contours
of a map. These lines resonate in his landscape drawings
produced later the same year, which appeared on the cover of
James K. Baxter’s Jerusalem Sonnets (1969).
Yet, one cannot overlook the overtly aesthetic and formal
properties of this canvas. The perfectly rendered surface,
fine symmetry, repetition of line, geometry and extreme
reductivism, place the work comfortably alongside minimalist
masters of the 1960s and ’70s. Hotere’s Black Painting
series calls to mind works by Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko,
Barnett Newman and Kazimir Malevich. Later, these
paintings became a catalyst for his exploration of paint and
darkness as his practice moved towards qualities of abstract
expressionism. His obsession with the monochrome, secures
Hotere among the family of black painters described by
Robert Motherwell: Manet, Goya, Matisse and Motherwell
himself, as “painters who employ a certain sardonic intensity,
almost a perversity in their commitment to the sacramental
centrality of this primary pigment”.¹
Though minimalist, Black Painting (1969) speaks a poetry of
its own, transcending nature and religion through its sublime
beauty and intellectual elegance.
EMILY GARDINER
¹ Quoted in Eric Protter ed., Painters on Painting, Grosset & Dunlap, New York,
1963.
62
CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE
Ngatirea (Day Dreams), Natarua Hangapa -
Arawa Tribe
oil on canvas signed C. F. Goldie, inscribed N.Z., and dated 1938 in brushpoint upper left; original John Leech Gallery label affixed verso 300mm x 245mm
Estimate $150,000 - $200,000
37
distinctive kaka beak flowers. Further similarities are seen
between the two works in terms of format, pose, costume
and accoutrements and it is notable that, presumably due to
the youth of the two sitters, they have not yet received kauae
moko (chin tattoo).
The focus in Ngatirea (Daydreams) has been placed on the
subject and her material taonga. She is shown wearing a
korowai (cloak) that is decorated with fine black hukahuka
(tassels) along with a pounamu tiki pendant and two
whakakai pounamu (greenstone earrings). Although this
issue has been repeatedly noted in discussions of Goldie’s
paintings, it is still worth contextualising his work by
recapitulating the prevailing Pakeha view at the turn of the
20th century that New Zealand’s indigenous people were
destined for extinction or assimilation. Despite evidence
of Maori regeneration, these beliefs were still prevalent in
1935 when the Auckland Star claimed that Goldie’s portraits
“of Maori men and women will be ‘Old Masters’ – and
connoisseurs will fight for them… when none of the race he
perpetuates are here”. While Goldie’s personal position on
the matter remains unknown, his portraits of Maori sitters
in varying states of solemn contemplation like Ngatirea
(Daydreams) did serve to illustrate the contemporary opinion
that the Maori was an ill-fated race. Somewhat ironically,
however, Goldie’s exacting approach to documenting what he
likely thought were the last members of a ‘noble race’ has
bequeathed New Zealand invaluable taonga tuku iho (prized
heirlooms) that serve to record the people,
material appearances and attitudes of a specific time in
this country’s past.
JEMMA FIELD
Painted by Charles Frederick Goldie in 1938, Ngatirea
(Daydreams), Natarua Hangapa – Arawa Tribe is a prime
example of the artist’s unparalleled ability to weave together
historical fact with an elegance and integrity through his
painstakingly mimetic technique. This combination of
elements is to some extent responsible for earning Goldie
a place as New Zealand’s most-celebrated and esteemed
painter of the 20th century. Ngatirea (Daydreams) is an
excellent example of Goldie’s late phase of works that
were completed throughout the 1930s. Characterised by a
thinner application of paint, a looser handling of the brush
and comparatively richer tonalities, these works were a
departure from the rigid compositions of his earlier career
and each imbues the sitter with a romantic light. Thus, in
this later work, we see Goldie return to and further develop
the approach that he had successfully honed at the Académie
Julian in Paris during the 1890s.
Executed in bust-length format, the present painting depicts
a relatively young Maori woman positioned front on to the
viewer with her head inclined to the left and eyes downcast.
Loose hair cascades over her shoulders and is delicately
pinned back by a cluster of scarlet kaka beak (Clianthus
puniceus) flowers. Performing a purely decorative function in
the portrait, the flowers of the kaka beak traditionally served
a specific function for Maori. Containing a large amount of
nectar, the flowers from the two endemic species of kaka
beak were used to feed tui that were kept in cages in order
to attract other birds that could then be trapped. While the
majority of Goldie’s portraits of Māori woman depict them
with unadorned hair, an earlier work from 1932 entitled
Reverie – Hinemoa, Te Arawa also depicts a young woman
with untied long hair that is adorned by a bunch of the highly
64
GRETCHEN ALBRECHT
Gains and Losses (Aequus)
acrylic on canvas signed Albrecht and dated 98 in brushpoint verso, lower right; dated 98 and inscribed Gains and losses (aequus) in brushpoint on stretcher; inscribed gains and losses and dated 1998, Ref. No: 6A/10 98-12 in ink on original artist’s label affixed to stretcher verso 1360mm x 2375mm
Estimate $30,000 - $40,000
38
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 65
COLIN MCCAHON
Northland
ink wash on paper signed McCahon, dated April ‘59 and inscribed Northland in ink lower right620mm x 500mm
REFERENCE Colin McCahon database reference number cm001231
Estimate $40,000 - $60,000
39
66
TOSS WOOLLASTON
A View of Tasman Bay from Harley’s Road
oil on board signed Woollaston in brushpoint lower right; unfinished painting verso 1145mm x 2600mm
PROVENANCEPrivate collection, Auckland. Formerly in the collection of Hamish Keith.
ILLUSTRATEDGerald Barnett, Toss Woollaston, An Illustrated Biography National Art Gallery, 1991, p 105.
Estimate $120,000 - $180,000
40
The basis of Toss Woollaston’s approach to image-making can
be found in his career-long ambition to make paintings that
were not concerned with reproducing the physical appearance
of his subject matter. Rather, Woollaston’s primary concern
was always to transmute to the viewer the sensation of
standing before his subject. Woollaston was unconcerned with
carefully editing and selecting the content that is presented
to the viewer as his works are about the imperfect experience
of encountering physical objects in real, three-dimensional
space. Woollaston’s maxim stood as a stark contrast to the
canon of artistic practice in New Zealand which, up until his
arrival and that of McCahon (with whom he had socialised in
Nelson during the summers of the 1930s), had been firmly
entrenched in a colonialist obligation to depict the landscape
as a vast and idyllic resource rather than as an entity with its
own innate character.
A View of Tasman Bay from Haley’s Road is a mature work
that, while painted when the artist was aged 71, is redolent
of the influences that drew Woollaston’s focus towards
expressionist mark-making at the very outset of his career.
Yet, at the same time, the work also presents an approach
to painting that could be nurtured only in New Zealand –
a mode of pictorial representation that could be shaped
only by the volcanic rock underbelly saddled beneath
this particular landscape’s green grass and tussock hills.
Woollaston’s methodology was torn from the playbook of
turn-of-the century modernists like Cézanne and Kirchner;
however, his use of colour represents a significant point of
departure from these forebears. An important development in
the practice of these modern masters was their willingness
to choose pigments that unequivocally amplified the form
and presence of their subject matter. However, the colours
used by Woollaston were always firmly grounded in a study
of the light conditions that were specific to New Zealand. A
View of Tasman Bay from Haley’s Road utilises extreme tonal
variation between light and dark and, while Woollaston’s
distribution of colour does accentuate the physical character
of the landscape, the pigments that he chose have dusky
undertones that speak directly to the New Zealand climate.
In A View of Tasman Bay from Haley’s Road, a further point
of departure from Woollaston’s modern roots can be found in
the artist’s almost alchemic ability to present receding space
without altering the measure of his brush strokes. A primary
development that turn-of-the-century modernists enacted
was an elevated awareness of the material quality of their
paintings: a shift of focus from illusory effects to surface
qualities. A View of Tasman Bay from Haley’s Road sees
Woollaston further develop these principles so that, while his
strokes have their own ebb and flow and a thick, palpable
presence, they are also a gateway into a world of the artist’s
inception.
Perhaps the most-celebrated aspect of Woollaston’s painting
practice is the way in which the structure of the New Zealand
landscape always plays a prominent role in his works. In A
View of Tasman Bay from Haley’s Road, the artist’s gestural
markings are draped across a sea of contours, almost
suggesting that concealed beneath them is a seething
mass of unimaginable power. In relation to the much-larger
geological forces that are hidden beneath the landscape, this
blanket of paintwork serves to illustrate the thinly spread
proportions of the life and vegetation that inhabit its surface.
There is a reverent overture in this depiction of Woollaston’s
own Nelson landscape: a personal recognition of the area’s
undulating ability to inspire. While the artist was not born in
Nelson, he settled in the area in his early 20s. Further, while
he moved away from the area, he would later find his way
back and he would die in the nearby town of Upper Moutere.
A View of Tasman Bay from Haley’s Road is an embodiment of
Woollaston’s lifelong relationship with the Tasman Bay area.
CHARLES NINOW
70
TONY FOMISON
After the Land Do You Look
oil on canvas in artist-painted timber roundel, inscribed #207, “After the land do you look”, started 12.5.78, Finished the next month. Canvas I stretched on inside of a roundel picked up from fleamarket. Oils in graphite on papel label affixed verso diameter 230mm
PROVENANCEGifted by the artist to the present owner, 1978.
EXHIBITED Exhibited: Whangarei Art Gallery.
Esimate $20,000 - $30,000
41
TONY FOMISON
The Seer
oil on canvas on board in found frame (round metal plate) signed Fomison, inscribed The Seer, and dated 7.5.76 in brushpoint lower edge diameter 165mm
PROVENANCEPurchased by the current owner from Barry Lett Gallery 1976; original Barry Lett receipt affixed verso
Estimate $10,000 - $15,000
42 TONY FOMISON
Nightflight
oil on jute canvas on board in artist-made frame, signed Tony Fomison, dated 1980, and inscribed “Nightflight” in graphite middle verso660mm x 445mm
PROVENANCEAcquired by the present owner from the artist at his studio, 1980.
EXHIBITED Whangarei Art Gallery.
Estimate $40,000 - $60,000
43
41
42
70
COLIN MCCAHON
Untitled (Landscape) from the
Northland series
oil on jute canvas 910mm x 580mm
PROVENANCEGifted by the artist to the present owner, circa 1961. While a teenager, and despite a meagre wage, the owner had purchased an oil from the Titirangi series. Apparently much impressed, McCahon gave her this work.
REFERENCEColin McCahon database reference number CM000461.
Estimate $70,000 - $90,000
44
Roughly divided into three horizontal segments that
logically bear out foreground, middle distance and sky,
Colin McCahon’s Northland from 1962 offers the viewer a
snapshot of a landscape that has been coarsely hewed and
pared back so that only the essential, unadorned structure
of the scene remains. The landscape vista is executed in a
reduced palette of yellow ochre, burnt hazel and sooty black
and McCahon transcribes it by removing almost all sense of
spatial recession so that the viewer travels vertically up the
canvas rather than receding into an imagined space. In place
of an illusionistic three-dimensionality, McCahon focuses on
realising a clarified unity of space and form.
The present painting belongs to McCahon’s second series
of Northland paintings, which he began in late 1962 and
continued throughout the subsequent year. Following
on from the Elias and Gate series, these works feature a
formal sparseness and a notable internal rhythm that is
communicated through a restricted palette of yellows and
blacks. This is patently visible in Northland where the
shadowy, swelling hill in the foreground blossoms to the
right in a motion that is countered by a steep jump in the
horizon line on the left. By comparison, the earlier Northland
paintings from 1958 for the most part feature a wider palette
choice and a heightened sense of naturalism in the more
pronounced use of local colour. In the same manner as were
the pivotal Northland Panels from 1958, the Northland
paintings were part of McCahon’s attempt to convey
something of the magic and rarity of the austere
New Zealand landscape that he believed was endangered
by the population’s apathy.
The key to the painterly vitality of Northland lies in
McCahon’s controlled use of colour and pattern. A burnished
sky bears witness to a brooding mass of lavender-tipped
cloud that has been smudged across the canvas and now
hangs obstinately in the centre of the painting. In places,
McCahon’s application of paint is thin and raked so that the
distinctively thick weave of the jute canvas becomes visible
to the human eye and adds a textural dimension to the work.
The edges of the painting are tightly cropped so that the
rising landscape forms of Northland appear to spill out and
continue beyond the confines of the canvas. The simple and
orderly structure of Northland produces an infinite stillness
so that the work comes to exude a measured poise and an
explicit serenity that is akin to the contemplation of spiritual
benevolence.
As is the case with the majority of McCahon’s landscape
paintings, Northland presents the viewer with a spiritual and
metaphysical journey. It calls for the viewer to walk over the
rolling hills, to watch the sun seep below the horizon line
and to bear witness to the mystical power of the New Zealand
landscape. As such, the painting bears a pensive religiosity
and is an example of McCahon’s exploration of the symbolic
potential of the landscape in his incessant quest to better
understand the nature of faith and religious conviction.
It also speaks of McCahon’s role as a prophetic visionary
who was seeking a new and expressive visual language
that would be able to communicate something of the
fundamentals of belief and the poignancy of doubt to a wide
and diverse audience.
JEMMA FIELD
72
COLIN MCCAHON
Necessary Protection
charcoal on paper signed McCahon, dated ‘71 and inscribed Necessary Protection in pencil lower edge460mm x 610mm
EXHIBITEDA significant number of Necessary Protection paintings and drawings were exhibited in McCahon’s 1971 exhibition, Necessary Protection, Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland, 1 - 12 November 1971. No catalogue accompanied the exhibition so it is not possible to determine exactly which works were shown on that occasion.
REFERENCE Colin McCahon Database Reference CM000339
Estimate $28,000 - $32,000
45
Necessary Protection, torn straight from the artist’s sketchbook, belongs to sprawling series of works defined by both a central conceptual framework and a common set of formal constraints. The works from this series are loosely based on both the sunset and the cliff formations that the artist observed at Muriwai Beach. The cliffs on either side of the beach are described by the two blocks of dark, negative space and the sunset is contained by the Tau shape in the centre of the image. Necessary Protection is not a reflection on one place in particular. Rather, in this work, the artist has sought to address the relationship between human beings and the earth beneath them.
In the catalogue for his 1971 Earth/Earth exhibition at Barry Lett Galleries in Auckland, McCahon told of a cliff section at Muriwai that had been put on the market: “just like everything else,” he lamented, “it was for sale.” Further, he speculated that if it were bought by someone who sought to develop the land, it would set in motion a vicious cycle that would only lead to further gentrification and the gradual pollution of the black-sand beach that he loved so dearly with “plasticised ‘sundae’ containers and ice-cream sticks and wrappings and plastic bags from the new season’s bikinis”. It feels slightly off-key to refer to any of McCahon’s work as protest pieces as he was not an artist who provided the viewer with straightforward readings that could be shouted out across the room. However, upon first glance, the full frontal weight of the cliff faces makes them appear almost as barricades, thrown up by the artist as if to say “stop!”
The Tau form and the landscape draw meaning from each other. In this early iteration of the series, the artist has purposefully
chosen not to define whether the sky has been framed by the landscape or, alternatively, whether the Tau form has been juxtaposed on top. Most readily, the Tau form presents itself as a divine entity. It appears almost like the mid-section of a crucifix and it is implied that, beyond the viewer’s narrow frame of reference, the form extends up into the heavens and down through the core of the earth. Further, it also serves as an illustration of an uphill path to enlightenment. Outside of Christian imagery, the symbol Tau, from the Greek alphabet, has other connotations of which the artist was well aware. In mathematical equations, Tau serves as a symbol for time and, when set into the picture plane with this charge, its infliction is altered considerably. In this light, we see a diorama of the future that McCahon predicts. Stripped of its character, the Tau has cut the landscape into a uniform mass.
Produced with only rudimentary materials and completed in the same setting in which it was commenced, Necessary Protection is a direct translation of the artist’s thought and feeling. The staple format – the divided landscape that inverts to a Tau – was used by the artist like a ready-made: a set of concerns and associations that could easily be inserted into a work simply by drawing the shape. Each time it was used, the treatment altered slightly and some new understanding was gained; thus McCahon repeated the Necessary Protection form exclusively for a period of two years. This series is responsible for the introduction of symbolic, hard-edged abstraction into the artist’s work.
CHARLES NINOW
74
COLIN MCCAHON
Untitled (North Otago Landscape)
charcoal transfer on paper signed CM and dated ‘61 in charcoal lower right 260mm x 200mm
PROVENANCEGifted to the present owner by a friend and colleague of the artist. Originally consigned to the present owner and stored within the same UNESCO envelope, addressed to CJ McCahon, that accompanies the following lot.
Estimate $8,000 - $15,000
46
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 75
COLIN MCCAHON
Untitled (Kauri)
charcoal transfer on paper 260mm x 200mm
PROVENANCEGifted to the present owner by a friend and colleague of the artist. Accompanied by a UNESCO envelope, addressed to C J McCahon, in which the work was originally consigned to the present owner and in which the work was stored.
Estimate $8,000 - $15,000
47
76
PAT HANLY
City Bride
enamel and timber construction on board signed Hanly, dated 90 and inscribed City Bride in brushpoint lower left1050mm x 840mm
Estimate $20,000 - $30,000
48
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 77
FRANCES HODGKINS
Untitled (Girl in a 1920s Cloche Hat)
watercolour on paper signed Frances Hodgkins in graphite lower right 440mm x 300mm
Estimate $20,000 - $30,000
49
78
COLIN MCCAHON
Annunciation
charcoal on paper on cardboard, signed McCahon 49 and inscribed Annunciation in charcoal upper centre; inscribed drawing Annunciation, Colin McCahon, 6gns verso; original Manawatu Art Gallery Travelling Exhibition label affixed to backing board inscribed Annunciation McCahon, Religious cat. no. 37 and inscribed carte 4 in red ink verso650mm x 520mm
PROVENANCEPurchased by the present owner from the Eric Scholes Gallery, Rotorua, 1964
EXHIBITEDColin McCahon and Toss Woollaston, Helen Hitchings gallery, Wellington, 30 July - 5 August 1949, 6 gns. Group Show 51, Canterbury Society of Arts Gallery, Durham Street, Christchurch, 15 - 26 October 1951, cat. no. 62, 6 gns. McCahon: ‘Religious’ works 1946-1952, Manawatu Art Gallery, 24 March-? April 1975, cat. no. 37.
REFERENCEColin McCahon database reference number CM000511
Estimate $60,000 - $75,000
50
Executed in 1949, Colin McCahon’s Annunciation is a
monochromatic masterpiece of concentrated energy, hallowed
serenity and an overriding sense of repose. It was completed
in charcoal on paper and the close proximity of the two
figures to each other and to the spectator, provides an honest
directness that removes any possible barrier of distance,
thereby heightening the immediacy of the scene. Narrated in
The Gospel of Luke in the New Testament, The Annunciation
is the event when the Archangel Gabriel was sent from
Heaven to tell the Virgin Mary that she was to be the mother
of Jesus, son of God. This pivotal biblical occasion has
come to be one of the most common subjects in the history
of Christian art. In choosing to depict The Annunciation,
McCahon established a direct dialogue with the great masters
of European art, paying homage to artists such as Duccio,
Giotto, Titian, Signorelli and Gauguin who, from the pages
of art books, had aided McCahon in his journey to clarify
his painterly approach to religious themes and ideas. While
Annunciation does not offer any direct quotations, the
emotional and psychological intensity keenly harks back to
the work of Titian while the stylised simplicity of the figures
is reminiscent of Giotto, and the strong use of line recalls the
cloisonné style of Gauguin.
The composition of McCahon’s Annunciation is powerful in
its simplicity, with both the Virgin Mary and the Archangel
Gabriel presented in extreme close-up and acutely cropped to
bust-length format. A roughly shaded area of charcoal forms a
circular framing device, crowning the two figures and creating
a window through which the details of a distant landscape
become apparent. A linear set of hills is seen rippling along
the horizon line, blanketed by a stream of brisk cloud that
scurries overhead. The middle ground offers an expansive
spread of pasture interrupted only by a copse of trees and
what is perhaps a milking shed or barn that has been neatly
framed by a fence. Against this rural backdrop, McCahon
envisions the portentous moment of The Annunciation.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, one of McCahon’s
primary aims was to reconfigure the events of the Bible
in order to make them relevant to the everyday concerns
of contemporary New Zealanders. The way in which he
achieved this was by bringing biblical episodes closer in
time and space and by transplanting them into a locale
that was inherently New Zealand. Thus, the rolling hills and
wide, sparse areas of the Nelson region are recognisable as
the physical location of many of McCahon’s early religious
paintings. In discussing this section of McCahon’s oeuvre,
Gordon H. Brown notes that “frequently the situation
depicted shows one agent in an active role while the
other is a passive recipient”¹, which is clearly borne
out in Annunciation. Here, McCahon casts Mary as the
inactive, acquiescent character in the scene, showing her
with eyes closed and head bowed in a manner of reverent
contemplation. Her abeyance is balanced by the Archangel
who adopts an animated role, staring resolutely ahead with
eyes wide open and lips slightly parted as though in the
middle of delivering God’s sacred proclamation. Capturing
the sacrosanct figures of Mary and Gabriel in a prophetic
moment, McCahon’s tightly controlled composition, his
sincerity of approach and his stylistic rawness coalesce to
produce a work of enduring originality and pertinence.
JEMMA FIELD
¹ Brown, Gordon H., Colin McCahon: Artist (Auckland: Reed, 1984), p.37.
80
GRAHAME SYDNEY
Winter at Burke’s Pass
oil on linen signed Grahame Sydney and dated 2009 in brushpoint lower right; signed Grahame Sydney, dated © 2009, and inscribed “Winter at Burkes Pass”, oil on linen, Grahame Sydney, Cambrian Valley, Central Otago, NZ in marker pen lower right verso
Estimate $45,000 - $65,000
51
Painted in 2009, Grahame Sydney’s Winter at Burkes Pass,
takes the landscape of the Mackenzie Country in South
Canterbury as its departure point. The important heritage site
of Burkes Pass on the banks of the Opihi River divides the
Two Thumbs and Rollesby Ranges, thereby allowing for easy
access to the high tussock lands of the Mackenzie Basin.
Under Sydney’s brush, a segment of the region is translated
into a two-dimensional ivory haven. Freshly fallen snow
blankets the earth and the painting virtually bristles under
the silence of the scene.
From a distance, Sydney’s Winter at Burkes Pass appears to
be an almost barren wonderland of white and grey tonalities.
United in their milky hues, sky and earth are nearly
indistinguishable with the exception of the two rivulets of
muted silver that run the expanse of the painting and serve
to cleave the niveous landscape from a brooding, bloodless
sky. Nestled in the snowy haze, this nebulous grey patch is
perhaps a run of pine trees but, then again, it is maybe a
rocky outcrop or a series of rolling hills or even, possibly,
a band of houses. Comprising, ostensibly, an expanse of
bleached ground, a leaden, chalky sky and a murky smudge
in the middle distance, Winter at Burkes Pass is evidence of
Sydney’s supreme technical virtuosity. If one draws closer to
Winter at Burkes Pass, however, a number of small, mimetic
elements reveal themselves, looming out of the picture plane
and pitting the work with an internal narrative.
Viewing the painting at a closer proximity, the spectator
is welcomed into a finely detailed wintery world.
Compositionally graceful, Winter at Burkes Pass is solidly
anchored by a thick wooden post in the lower left foreground
that gives way to a series of wooden palings and strings of
barbed wire. Radically foreshortened, the fence marches
backwards into the painting where it carves out a sharp right
angle, turning to shadow the horizon line until it trails off the
edge of the painting in an amaranthine manner. A circular
concrete water trough punctuates the far corner of the fenced
paddock and the occasional brave stalk of grass can be seen
breaking the snowy covering.
It is characteristic of Sydney that Winter at Burkes Pass is
devoid of any human presence. However, as with most of
his best works, the painting contains hints and traces of
humanity, of civilisation, progress and ownership. Unobtrusive
yet assertive, the wooden railing and rounded trough signal
that this is a maintained property and not a bleak, desolate
wilderness. The landscape is private and cultivated, and
belongs to someone, and the painting pays a humble and
subtle tribute to agriculture, industry, perseverance and the
human desire for ownership. In conjunction with the works
that Sydney completed following his trips to Ross Island,
Antarctica, in 2003 and 2006, Winter at Burkes Pass is
a testimony to his ability to transform a pallid and almost
empty expanse of frozen landscape into an image of enduring
visual interest. These images of alabaster lands punctuated
by small and comparatively insignificant markers of humanity
have become something of a hallmark of Sydney’s style.
JEMMA FIELD
82
RICHARD KILLEEN
East-West
watercolour on paper signed Killeen, dated 26.2.80 and inscribed East-West in pencil lower edge570mm x 390mm
Estimate $3,000 - $5,000
53
JULIAN DASHPER
Halley’s Comet at Silverdale
oil on paper signed Julian Dashper, dated 1986 and inscribed Halleys Comet at Silverdale in pencil upper edge verso 1200mm x 790mm
Estimate $7,000 - $10,000
52
MICHEL TUFFERY
Ha’amana’o Raiatea Nui
graphite and coloured pencil on paper signed Michel Tuffery and inscribed Ha’amana’o Raiatea Nui in pencil lower edge750mm x 540mm
NOTEOne of five works produced whilst the artist was in the Solomon Islands to teach the local artists how to make woodblock prints.
Estimate $3,000 - $4,000
54
52
54
53
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 83
GEOFF THORNLEY
Of His, Him #3
string, modelling compound, and oil on linen, signed Thornley in brushpoint verso; signed Thornley, dated 6.95 and inscribed Of His, Him. #3 in stencil verso2190mm x 760mm
Estimate $9,000 - $15,000
56
BRIAN BRAKE
Buddha Hand - National Museum, Gampeng
Pet, Thailand 1970
chromogenic colour print impressed signature stamp lower right 620mm x 470mm
Estimate $5,000 - $7,000
55
84
FRANCES HODGKINS
Rue de l’Horloge, Dinan, France
pencil and watercolour on paper signed FH and dated 1902 in brushpoint lower right; inscribed Rue de l’Horloge, Dinan, £7-7-, Frances Hodgkins in pencil verso370mm x 270mm
Estimate $28,000 - $35,000
57
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 85
FRANCES HODGKINS
Washer Women
pencil and watercolour on paper signed FMH in brushpoint lower right340mm x 255mm
Estimate $25,000 - $35,000
58
86
RALPH HOTERE
Drawing for Requiem Series
ink and watercolour on paper signed Hotere, dated ‘74 and inscribed Drawing for Requiem series in ink upper right500mm x 700mm
Estimate $20,000 - $30,000
59 ELIZABETH THOMSON
Space, Time Continuum
hand-painted cast zinc on spray-coated panel signed Elizabeth Thomson, dated 2003 and inscribed Space, time Continuum in pencil upper right verso 610mm x 2300mm
Estimate $18,000 - $25,000
60
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 87
JEFFREY HARRIS
Portrait of My Wife
oil on board signed Jeffrey Harris, dated 1971 and inscribed Portrait of my wife [Joanna Paul] in pencil verso 410mm x 430mm
Estimate $8,000 - $12,000
62JEFFREY HARRIS
Double Portrait
oil on board signed J. Harris and dated 1974 in brushpoint lower right; signed Jeffrey Harris and dated 1974 in pen verso; inscribed Double Portrait in pencil verso 415mm x 455mm
Estimate $8,000 - $12,000
63
KARL MAUGHAN
Untitled (Garden Painting)
oil on canvas signed with artists signature and dated 23/10/89 in oil pastel upper left verso 1210mm x 1990mm
Estimate $22,000 - $30,000
61
88
ANN ROBINSON
Spiral Vase (Four Sections)
45% lead crystal, 1/1 signed A Robinson, dated 2001 and inscribed 1/1 and NZ on underside
PROVENANCEAccompanied by the original purchase receipt from F.H.E Gallery, 2001. Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the artist, dating the work 16.02.2001; colours used are pink, purple and clear; reissued 7.3.2012.
Estimate $18,000 - $22,000
64
LEN CASTLE
Sulphur Bowl
stoneware, matt black exterior, yellow cracquelure interior glaze, impressed LC mark undersidediameter 415mm, height 150mm
Estimate $5,000 - $8,000
66
LEN CASTLE
Crater Lake Bowl
earthenware, matt black exterior, grey hand-modelled rim, blue alkaline interior glaze, impressed LC mark undersidediameter 540mm, height 130mm
Estimate $5,000 - $8,000
65
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 89
DORIS LUSK
College Demolition
acrylic on canvas signed D. Lusk and dated ‘81 in brushpoint lower edge 855mm x 630mm
REFERENCEDoris Lusk’s Demolition series carries an unsettling prescience, the works decrying Christchurch’s partiality for demolition.
Estimate $12,000 - $18,000
67
RUDOLPH GOPAS
Area of Quietness
oil on jute canvas on board inscribed Auckland Art Gallery in brushpoint verso; Auckland Art Gallery exhibition label affixed verso 910mm x 1080mm
EXHIBITED Contemporary New Zealand Paintings, Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland, 1964; The Group Show, Durham Street Art Gallery, Christchurch, 31 October - 15 November 1964.
Estimate $8,000 - $12,000
68
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 91
PHILIP CLAIRMONT
The Red Chair of China
oil and acrylic on canvas signed P. Clairmont and dated 1976 in brushpoint lower edge; inscribed The Red Chair - of China in brushpoint upper edge1240mm x 1240mm
Estimate $25,000 - $35,000
69
JOHN WALSH
Tipi Haere II
oil on board signed J Walsh, dated 2003 and inscribed Tipi Haere in pencil lower left verso1230mm x 1230mm
Estimate $16,000 - $22,000
70
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 93
IAN SCOTT
Lattice No. 153
acrylic on canvas signed Ian Scott and dated ‘87 in pencil upper right verso; signed Ian Scott, dated April, 1987 and inscribed 411, 72” x 72”, Lattice No. 153 in marker pen on stretcher verso; Ferner Galleries certificate of authenticity affixed verso 1830mm x 1830mm
Estimate $12,000 - $18,000
71
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 95
EDWARD FRISTROM
Untitled (View of Wellington)
oil on board signed Edward Fristrom in brushpoint lower left350mm x 240mm
PROVENANCEA gift from the artist and passed by descent to the present owner
Estimate $5,000 - $7,000
72
RALPH HOTERE
Les Saintes Maries de la Mer
watercolour, graphite, oilstick and gold leaf on paper signed Hotere, dated ‘78, and inscribed Les Saintes Maries de la Mer in ink lower edge375mm x 275mm
Estimate $7,000 - $9,000
73
RALPH HOTERE
Pine
watercolour and woodblock print on paper signed Hotere, dated ‘71, inscribed from Pine a poem by Bill Manhire lower right; letterpress printed Printed on the royal Columbian hand-press, Bibliography Room, University of Otago lower left 540mm x 340mm
Estimate $10,000 - $15,000
75
STANLEY PALMER
White Island - Whakaari East
oil on canvas on board signed S. Palmer and dated 2000 in brushpoint lower right 605mm x 1155mm
Estimate $10,000 - $15,000
74
75
96
76
77
DICK FRIZZELL
Chore Boy Painting
oil on canvas signed Frizzell, dated 17/11/98, and inscribed Chore Boy Painting in brushpoint lower right610mm x 610mm
Estimate $8,000 - $12,000
76
TONY DE LAUTOUR
Mystic
acrylic on paper signed and dated 2008 in pencil verso 640mm x 900mm
Estimate $2,500 - $3,500
77
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 97
DICK FRIZZELL
No Sweat
oil on canvas signed Frizzell, dated 18/5/98, and inscribed No Sweat in brushpoint lower right755mm x 610mm
Estimate $10,000 - $15,000
78
98
RALPH HOTERE
Jerusalem, Jerusalem
oil, acrylic, collage and lithographic imprint on paper signed Hotere and dated 2004 in pencil lower right; Temple Gallery label affixed verso 570mm x 760mm
Estimate $18,000 - $25,000
80
FATU FEU’U
Ake Ake
acrylic on canvas signed Feu’u and dated 05 in brushpoint lower right 1830mm x 1210mm
Estimate $8,000 - $12,000
81
79
80
78
IAN SCOTT
Lattice
watercolour dated September 1984 and inscribed Lattice drawing no 109 in pencil verso 340mm x 340mm
Estimate $900 - $1,800
79
IMPORTANT WORKS OF ART 99
CONDITIONS OF SALE FOR BUYERS
1. BIDDING. The highest bidder shall be the purchaser subject to the auctioneer having the right to refuse the bid of any person. Should any dispute arise as to the bidding, the lot in dispute will be immediately put up for sale again at the preceding bid, or the auctioneer may declare the purchaser, which declaration shall be conclusive. No person shall advance less at a bid than the sum nominated by the auctioneer, and no bid may be retracted.
2. RESERVES. All lots are sold subject to the right of the seller or her/his agent to impose a reserve.
3. REGISTRATION. Purchasers shall complete a bidding card before the sale giving their own correct name, address and telephone number. It is accepted by bidders that the supply of false information on a bidding card shall be interpreted as deliberate fraud.
4. BUYER’S PREMIUM. The purchaser accepts that in addition to the hammer or selling price Webb’s will apply a buyer’s premium of 12.5% for the Important Paintings and Contemporary Art sale, (unless otherwise stated), together with GST on such premiums.
5. PAYMENT. Payment for all items purchased is due on the day of sale immediately following completion of the sale.
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Any items not collected within seven days of the auction may be subject to a storage and insurance fee. A receipted invoice must be produced prior to removal of any lot.
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I. Title and right of disposal of the goods shall not pass to the purchaser until payment has been made in full by cleared funds. Where any lot purchased is held by Webb’s pending i. clearance of funds by the purchaser or ii. completion of payment after receipt of a deposit, the lot will be held by Webb’s as bailee for the vendor, risk and title passing to the purchaser immediately upon notification of clearance of funds or upon completion of purchase. In the event that a lot is lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed before title is transferred to the purchaser, the purchaser shall be entitled to a refund of all monies paid to Webb’s in respect of that lot, but shall not be entitled to any compensation for any consequent losses howsoever arising.
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13. SALES POST AUCTION OR BY PRIVATE TREATY. The above conditions shall apply to all buyers of goods from Webb’s irrespective of the circumstances under which the sale is negotiated.
14. CONDITION OF ITEMS. Condition of items is not detailed in this catalogue. Buyers must satisfy themselves as to the condition of lots they bid on and should refer to clause six. Webb’s are pleased to provide intending buyers with condition reports on any lots.
100
INDEX OF ARTISTS
Albrecht, Gretchen 38
Angus, Rita 27
Bambury, Stephen 12
Brake, Brian 55
Bush, Kushana 1
Castle, Len 65, 66
Clairmont, Philip 69
Dashper, Julian 52
de Lautour, Tony 2, 4
Ellis, Robert 18
Feu’u, Fatu 81
Fomison, Tony 29, 41, 42, 43, 77
Fristrom, Edward 72
Frizzell, Dick 76, 79
Gimblett, Max 15
Goldie, Charles Frederick 34, 37
Gopas, Rudolph 68
Hammond, Bill 30, 35
Hanly, Pat 48
Harris, Jeffrey 62, 63
Henderson, Louise 31
Hodgkins, Frances 28, 49, 57, 58
Hotere, Ralph 24, 36, 59, 73, 75, 80
Killeen, Richard 17, 53
Lusk, Doris 67
Maddox, Allen 10, 11
Maughan, Karl 61
McCahon, Colin 44, 45, 9, 13, 23, 32, 39, 46, 47, 50
Mrkusich, Milan 20
Nigro, Jan 16
Palmer, Stanley 74
Parekowhai, Michael 33
Robinson, Ann 64
Scott, Ian 71, 78
Siddell, Peter 22
Siddell, Sylvia 19
Stichbury, Peter 5, 8
Stringer, Terry 6, 7
Sydney, Grahame 51
Thomson, Elizabeth 14, 60
Thornley, Geoff 56
Tuffery, Michel 26, 54
Walsh, John 70
Ward Knox, John 3
White, Robin 21, 25
Woollaston, Toss 40
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