WORKS FROM THE MALCOLM MCNEILL COLLECTION

LOTS 8 - 14

8 TOSS WOOLLASTON (1910 - 98)

Mapua Landscape, 1939

Oil on board 41 x 45

Signed

Inscribed Mapua Landscape verso

Another inscription in artist’s hand verso reads: Possession of Rodney Kennedy, 73 Sommerville Street, Dunedin

$35,000 - 45,000

PROVENANCE

Malcolm McNeill Collection

Ex Collection for Rodney Kennedy

EXHIBITED

M T Woollaston 1933 - 73, A travelling exhibition organised by the Manawatu Art Gallery and Sponsored by the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council

Original exhibition label affixed verso

Exhibited as Landscape with Pine Tree, Cat. no. 31

9 TEUANE TIBBO (1895 - 1984)

Untitled Oil on board 61 x 73.5

$20,000 - 30,000

PROVENANCE

Malcolm McNeill Collection

Purchased from RKS Art

Bill Reed’s Quiet Regionalism - I was performing in Invercargill when I first came across the paintings of Bill Reed. He was teaching at the art school there and a mutual friend suggested I look at some of the work, “Bill could do with the money”... which I understood from trying to make a living in music. Things weren’t going too badly for me, so I ended up buying a few paintings. That’s over 30 years ago. The 80s. Later I sold one to the McDougall Art Gallery and following Christchurch earthquake of 2011, when I went to live in Thailand for a few years. Bill Reed’s paintings have hung on my various walls or at friends places ever since.

I have always loved Boats in a Harbour. It is a jewel of a painting, full of light and gaiety. It embodies both regionalism and modernism in much the same way that Rita Angus’ work does. Not surprisingly Reed, Russell Clark, Bill Sutton and Rita Angus would often go on plein air painting trips together. Reed was best man at Russell Clark’s wedding. This painting is most likely near Moeraki, Otago.

From 1942-45 Bill Reed was in the Field Ambulance Corp stationed in the Pacific Zone. I have a couple of paintings that come from that time - one work is of two island men on a beach sawing a big log; and a portrait of a women wearing a brightly coloured headscarf. There is another little painting, the size of a cigar box lid, of an old woman collecting faggots for a fire. They all display deft, painterly brushwork and a sensitive highly developed colour palette.

Reed never enjoyed the attention that Rita Angus got. In the mad rush of internationalism that has overtaken the New Zealand Art market in recent times, quiet, modest regionalist artworks are too easily overlooked. But his best work is up there with the best of it. A work by Rita Angus, of similar calibre and size, recently sold for over $100,000.

MALCOLM MCNEIL

10 WILLIAM JAMES REED (1908 - 96)

Boats in a Harbour

Watercolour 30.5 x 36.5

Signed

$5,000 - 7,500

11 WILLIAM JAMES REED (1908 - 96)

Gathering Faggots

Oil on board 27.5 x 30.5

Signed

$2,500 - 3,500

12 WILLIAM JAMES REED (1908 - 96)

Lady with Headscarf

Oil on board 46 x 34.5

Signed

$2,000 - 3,000