Autumn Catalogue 2012
pierre peeters gallery 251 Parnell Road: Habitat Courtyard: Auckland: p.peeters@xtra.co.nz (09)3774832
Welcome to our Autumn Edition 2012 catalogue
Our commitment is to provide you with excellent examples of New Zealand art. The selection here ranges from historical and traditional paintings and watercolours to Modern paintings from the early 20th century, and important Contemporary works.
Please enjoy this catalogue and for all enquiries ph (09)3774832 or contact us p.peeters@xtra.co.nz or visit our website www.ppg.net.nz
Cover illustration: Philip Clairmont, Stairway with Light
Artist Unknown, circa 1860s Lake Taupo with Maori food store, pataka Watercolour 120 x 310 mm
This early watercolour is infused with the golden half-light of dusk which falls over the tranquil water of Lake Taupo. In the 1850s, this idyllic lake and region was the backdrop to a series of historically important Maori meetings which fuelled the King movement. The artist, as yet unknown, has rendered the locale with a light deftness and, unusually, includes a pataka, or Maori food store. Interestingly, Te Heuheu oversaw the rebuild of a larger, finely carved pataka, “Hinana ki uta Hinana ki tai�., to replace the previous one which had burned down in the mid 1850s. This rustic example we see in the twilght scene, along with figures and canoe, suggests an earlier time in New Zealand history.
John Barr Clarke Hoyte 1839-1913 Bay of Islands Signed lower right J C Hoyte Watercolour 400 x 580 mm
‘Hoyte is essentially an exponent of the picturesque landscape where topographical interest remains high but is always subordinate to an effect of light, deep space and atmosphere.’ Michael Dunn. John Barr Clarke Hoyte arrived in New Zealand in 1860, was a leading landscape artist whose watercolours belonged to the tradition of topographic draughtsmanship. Hoyte’s work, however, was distinguished by its delicacy, picturesque qualities and evocation of atmospheric conditions; as such it drew widespread praise as it does now. He arrived in Auckland in 1860, and among his roles in the city, one was as a school art teacher at the Church of England Grammar school, Auckland College and Grammar School. He was to play a prominent role in the Auckland art scene; in 1870, he co-founded the Auckland Society of Artists and played a key role on the committee engaged in planning its first exhibition of 1871. After moving with his family to Dunedin in 1876, he exhibited with the Otago Art Society. His work is represented in the public art collections including: Auckland Art Gallery, Aigantighe Art Gallery Timaru, Anderson Park Art Gallery, Auckland War Memorial Museum, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery, Rotorua Museum of Art and History, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Alexander Turnbull Library.
William George Baker 1864-1929 Head of George Sound Signed lower right W G Baker Oil on Canvas 590 x 890 mm At a time when owning an original art-work was out of reach for most, itinerant artist William George Baker had a huge following. One Wellington exhibition had an audience estimated at 100,000, and a 1911 show of over 100 paintings, completely sold out. Until a few years ago, however, much of his work has slumbered in museums and private collections. In 2007 and 2008, his works were finally given their due in curated exhibitions at Pataka Gallery, Wellington, and Rotorua Museum. The son of George Baker, who arrived in New Zealand as a child from Devon, Baker grew up in Wellington, the eldest of 12 children. Apparently self-trained, he exhibited with the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts from 18841904. His work was featured by the Otago Arts Society from 1893-1898, the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition in 1885 and the St Louis Exposition, Missouri in 1904. By c.1900 he turned to painting full-time (perhaps to the family’s horror) and by horse drawn caravan, he and his wife would scour the country in search for appealing views. He would work on these paintings wherever he could, sometimes trading paintings for hotel accommodation. Many of his subjects were from the Wairarapa and the Southern Lakes District. Head of George Sound is characteristic of his imagery which drew on the Romantic tradition. Baker depicts the scene on a calm scale; richly tinted mountains, veiled in mist, reside, rather than tower, over tranquil waters. Deep tones of brown violet and green are frequently used to unify and harmonise his compositions. His anecdotal details of campers at the lake edge, possibly echoes his own life-style whilst travelling. William George Baker is represented in the permanent collections of Te Papa, the Canterbury Museum, Waikato Museum, Rotorua Museum, Christchurch Art Gallery and the Turnbull and Hocken Libraries.
R P MacGoun circa 1880 Tiwai point Signed Lower left R P MacGoun Watercolour 220 x 360 mm Tiwai Point is a rendering by Scottish artist R.P. MacGoun . This location, at the entrance to Bluff Harbour on the Southern Coast of the South Island, was used in the 1950s to establish an aluminum smelter. The level of industry McGoun records in c.1880 is decidedly more modest; under a lowering moist sky, a boat to the left is being built, and strewn wood in the foreground creates a sense of both depth and proximity. McGoun’s scene includes tiny figures near boat sheds and the long jetty into the water and the irregular outline of wind-blown trees. This Southland artist primarily painted watercolours of the Bluff and Invercargill in 1880s and is represented in Invercargill City Gallery.
Alfred Wilson Walsh 1859-1916 Mother and Child outside Maori Whare Signed Lower left ‘ A W Walsh’ Watercolour 180 x 140 mm Alfred Walsh was born in Kyneton, Victoria, moving to Otago as a child. He was educated privately in Dunedin and developed a keen love of the local countryside. Like many New Zealand watercolourists, his early years were spent working as a draughtsman and in his spare time he sketched and received instruction in painting. One of his tutors at the time was George O’Brien. By the age of 27 he had established a reputation as a painter and this led to his appointment on the teaching staff of the School of Art in Christchurch. After having taught there for 20 years, he left for Auckland in 1912, settled in Parnell and devoted all his time to painting. His later years were spent in Tauranga where he died at the age of 57. Walsh was remarkable amongst the established New Zealand painters in-so-far-as he never travelled abroad and received little formal training. Quite justly however, he is regarded as one of the finest watercolourists New Zealand has produced. The excellence of his work is lodged in his perception - his ability to comprehend and record the illusive qualities of the New Zealand bush. Although Walsh was not accepted in his own time, he has now become recognised as an artist who grew to maturity in New Zealand by drawing strength from familiar surroundings. Walsh is represented in all major public galleries in New Zealand
Trevor Lloyd 1864-1937 Young Maori Maiden Signed lower right Trevor Lloyd Etching 280 x 120 mm
Trevor Lloyd is most known for his delicate and sharply observed etchings of the Ne Silverdale, just out of Auckland, Trevor Lloyd was brought up on the farm and educa do. As a boy, Trevor drew the flora and fauna around him at a time when Silverdale w with the artist L. J. Steele.
During the 1890s, after his father’s death, the artist settled in Auckland making his li Zealand Magazine and sketches to the New Zealand Graphic. In 1903 he was appoin drawings for the supplements to the New Zealand Herald. It was his daughter, the a has since attracted many collectors.
Trevor Lloyd 1864-1937 A Quiet Nook Signed and titled A Quiet Nook: Trevor Lloyd Etching 320 x 120 mm
Trevor Lloyd 1864-1937 Kaimatua Falls Signed and titled Kaimatua Falls: Trevor Lloyd Etching 310 x 90 mm
ew Zealand bush in all its variation and mystery, as well as his affectionately drawn Maori subjects. Born in ated in the district. His father Henry Lloyd also produced drawings and watercolours as his son Trevor was to was un-manicured and more bush-clad. While Lloyd had no formal training in art, he had some association
iving in a range of ways using his drawing skills. These included producing illustrated stories for the New nted to the staff of the Auckland Weekly News, drawing mainly political cartoons. He later made pen and ink artist Constance who introduced him to etching. His aptitude in this medium, along with his subject matter,
Marcus King 1891-1987 Sunlight and Shade Signed lower left Marcus King Oil on Canvas 390 x 500 mm
Marcus King, born in Taranaki in the last decade of the 19th century, was a painter who sought out a certain clarity and quietude in his imagery. In Sunlight and Shade, a prominent outcrop of trees harbour a quiet, cool valley retreat, flanked by brilliant, sun-lit hills. Big skies and billowy cloud dust the tops of blue-tinged mountains in Landscape, Hutt Valley. In A Harbour scene, a calm stretch of water in King’s characteristic milky bluegreen, is flanked by a subtly painted foreground, and purple-hued shore, boat and land. The plein-air aspect of his work comes as no surprise; after working in the architectural division of the Public Works Department from 1906, King later transferred to Auckland where he studied under Edward Fristrom at the Elam School of Fine Arts. However, his interest in formal design distinguishes him somewhat from Fristrom’s painterly style; after service in World War I he returned to Wellington to become a commercial artist (and part-time art teacher at the Wellington Technical College). In c.1920, he joined the National Publicity Studios. The clarity and flatter field of bright yellow colour in Sunlight and Shade echoes the formal simplicity of the punchy travel posters of his later career.
Marcus King 1891-1987 Landscape Hutt Valley Signed lower right Marcus King Oil on Canvas on Board 300 x 390 mm
Marcus King 1891-1987 Harbour Scene Oil on Canvas on Board 290 x 360 mm
Milan Mrkusich b 1925 Painting no 7 1959 (Landscape) Signed lower right Mrkusich Oil on Board 610 x 480 mm While titled ‘Landscape’ in brackets, Mrkusich was committed to investigating abstract formal values – as registered in series, rather than representational matters. Arguably the first to have produced the first abstract works in New Zealand, Mrkusich has claimed to be in search of “…the truth of colour and form and the response that colour brings from the viewer”. Self-taught, Mrkusich pioneered abstract modernism in New Zealand in the 1940s, a period which was very hostile to the so-called ‘extremes’ of modern art. His approach to colour in these early years was generally informed by Kandinsky’s writing on the emotive and metaphysical power of colour, and its receding and advancing qualities. Mrkusich painted full-time from 1958, and from c. 1960 he began to paint with a lengthened brushstroke and an increasing gestural spontaneity reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism. Painting No.7 was produced four years after he produced the flickering network of dabs, squares and rectangles of his well known painting Buildings, now at Te Papa. At the threshold of a series of investigations into the physicality of the brushstroke and the emotive and metaphysical qualities of paint, Painting No.7 is a treasure in New Zealand art history.
Buster Black 1932-2007 City at Night Signed lower right B.Black Oil on Board 390 x 490 mm How do you paint forms emerging from the night? Not many artists have tried. For Buster Black, the colour black became his signature. Black is a little known but important Maori artist engaging with modernist art practice in the 1950s and 1960s. He played a role in Colin McCahon’s development as an artist, McCahon ostensibly his tutor at the time. Jonathan Mane-Wheoki notes in the chapter ‘Modern Maori Art’ in the Auckland Art Gallery publication Art Toi, “…The two men developed a strong friendship. Black’s dramatic use of black and white, and texture (paint mixed with particles of glass, sand and wood creating an effect suggestive of the surfaces of volcanic mountains) were adapted by McCahon from the early 1960s.” City at Night, though darkly ambiguous, reveals a huddle of tall misshapen buildings featuring glowing chinks of light and colour. Deep slicks of brown emerge, along with dark blues. Its thick, irregular textures catch the light. It is in this alchemy of surface meeting light that the painting acquires such presence. A rarely found example of Black’s work, it is a fascinating addition to our knowledge of his preoccupations and contribution to New Zealand art.
Gwyneth Richardson 1896 -1980 Grafton Road, Auckland Signed lower left Gwyneth Richardson Watercolour 360 x 530 mm As with many other female artists trained in the early 20th century, New Zealand born Gwyneth Richardson is woefully under-documented. Anne Kirker acknowledged this in her publication in her 1980s publication, New Zealand Women Artists: A Survey of 150 Years. Richardson, despite having to fall back on book illustration as a living, was an active member of the Auckland Society of Arts and the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and exhibited regularly over five decades. Her pleasing and confident watercolours are often soothing reminders of the New Zealand that once was. Grafton Rd, Auckland, probably painted in the 1940s, is a fascinating rendering of a site now much changed. Richardson received her education in England. When she was 17, she had a drawing accepted by the Royal Academy. The artist attended the Central and Heatherly Schools of Art, and later, on revisiting England, she took a short course at the Harvey-Proctor School at Newlyn. Her main income seems to have been as a book illustrator, for children’s books in particular. In fine art, however, she specialised in watercolours depicting landscapes of England and New Zealand. She was represented in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, in 1924 and in the l940 New Zealand Centennial Exhibition in Wellington. Although she lived much of her later life in Wellington, Richardson travelled throughout New Zealand, producing deft and accomplished watercolour of towns and landscapes. These included North Island spots such as Waiheke, Bethells Beach, and Mt Maunganui.
Eric Lee-Johnson 1908-1993 Taumarere Pa: Kawakawa Signed lower right Lee Johnson Watercolour 265 x 360 mm Maurice Shadbolt’s autobiography of Eric Lee Johnson expressed that “There never was a more dedicated New Zealander in the arts...he persuaded us to see New Zealand not as an unpeopled land, but part of the human adventure”. But not only was this painter, one of the first to seek out the ‘true’ New Zealand, often on the fringes of farms and back-blocks, he was also a wonderful photographer, writer, designer, typographer and editor – of the Arts Year Book in the 1950s. There is something familiar and stirring about some of Lee-Johnson’s simplest subjects such as ….. We sense the wind through dark macrocarpa and rustling of undergrowth, the damp green, against the pink glow overhead of the close of day. It is easy to see how his 1950s series of North Island historic dwellings were influential in beginning a romantic topos in New Zealand art. Lee Johnson had solid grounding in the visual arts:from 1923 to 1926 he trained at the Elam School of Arts in Auckland and for the next few years was a commercial artist for Wilson and Horton. In 1930 he sailed for London where he worked in advertising and attended life classes at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts. In 1939 he was elected a member of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. Some of the places Lee-Johnson lived in New Zealand from 1942 to 1960 included the Coromandel and the Hokianga. Lee-Johnson is represented in all major collections throughout the country, including all public galleries and the Hocken and Turnbull Libraries. A retrospective exhibition of his paintings and drawings toured New Zealand in 1981-82.
Philip Clairmont (1949 - 1984) Stairway with Light Oil and Collage on Jute: circa 1976 1490 x 870 mm
Clairmont rocks. A man of deep contradictions; arguably he had the most rock’n’roll reputation in the art world of the 1970s and yet, he was modest, shy, highly articulate and profoundly thoughtful. His paintings are wild, frenetic, jangling and electric. The intensity of his perceptions - of the inanimate deeply familiar objects of his home life - manifest as powerful, hallucinatory visions. The chair, the fireplace, the light bulb, the couch and the sink, are the domestic motifs that Clairmont used as vehicles for emotion during the psychedelic 70s. His hallucinogenic-drug fuelled expressionism – of distorted forms and heightened colour, function, the artist said, as an extended “self-portrait”. His use of unstretched canvas and found collage fragments, suitably anti-bourgeois in effect, nods to the influence of his former tutor Gopas.
Untitled [The Light Bulb] features one of his classic themes of the swinging pendulum; his hot light bulb, ever present during his nocturnal painting sessions. Bizarre viewpoints and dancing, curving and zig-zagging forms whip up a powerful maelstrom dominated by electric yellows, greens, reds and emphatic black lines. Fragments of Brueghel reproductions adorn the surface, testimony to his avid consumption of European art history. Ultimately Clairmont’s works defy glib conclusions, a fact which is part of their strength and staying power.
Trevor Moffitt 1936-2006 The only Catch of the Day Signed and dated lower right Moffitt 1971 Oil on Board 910 x 1200 mm Against his father’s wishes, Trevor Moffitt attended the Auckland Teachers Training College before gaining a Diploma of Fine Arts (with honours) from the University of Canterbury. Under the instruction of William Sutton and Russell Clark, Moffitt became concerned that New Zealand was being painted from a European perspective and set out to paint “this place”. Continually drawn to stories of native folklore, Moffitts work is an enduring exploration of issues relevant to New Zealanders. Often painting a large number of works for each ‘story’, Moffitt is well known for his West Coast, MacKenzie, Hokonui Moonshine, Fields and Paddocks, and Human Condition One, Two and Three series. Moffitt’s work is held in an extensive number of collections, including the Auckland Art Gallery, Aigantighe, Anderson Park, Dowse, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Forrester, Eastern Southland Art Gallery, Hawkes Bay Museum, Hocken Library, Manawatu Art Gallery, McDougall, Rotorua Museum, Sarjeant, Suter and Te Papa Tongarewa.
Garth Tapper 1927-1999 Steel Magnolias Signed and dated lower right Garth Tapper 1990 Oil on Canvas 730 x 980 mm Garth Tapper is best known for his characterful painting of people. Steel Magnolias, inspired by the hit movie of the same name, makes local the theme of lively and intimate friendships between women. He uses a vivacious red lip-stick on many of the women in this outdoor scene, suggesting links between the central theme of the beauty salon of the movie and the fashion-conscious group here. What we also see here, is a sort of painting within a painting. Known as pentimenti – when the image of a previous design emerges through another, there is a face lower left on which Tapper has overlaid the hands of the woman in front. Tapper studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts 1945 - 1951 and, testimony to his ability, was invited by A J Fisher to lecture in painting to fellow students. In the same year he was awarded the Carnegie Scholarship by the Auckland Society of Arts and this enabled him to continue his studies in Europe in 1952 and 1953. During this period he made contact with Augustus John and Vivian Pitchforth while studying at the Slade and Chelsea Schools of Art in London. A tour with A J Fisher through Belgium and Holland and further studies were undertaken in France, Spain and Italy. Tapper returned to New Zealand with his wife in 1953 to commence teaching at Auckland Secondary Schools until 1960..He then rejoined the staff of the Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University and lectured in painting for 17 years, retiring from Elam as a Senior Lecturer in 1977. He is represented in private collections as well as in the Auckland City Art Gallery, The Bath House Rotorua, Waikato Museum of Art and History and the National Art Gallery (now Te Papa) Wellington.
Tony De Lautour b 1965 Cartel 2 Signed and dated lower right Tony De Lautour 2002 Acrylic on Canvas 1010 x 3040 mm diptych
Tony de Lautour was born in 1965 in Melbourne. He graduated Bachelor of Fine Arts (majoring in sculpture) from the the Visa Gold Art Award.
His paintings from that first exhibition, ‘Bad White Art’, were deliberately naive and included imagery reminiscent of t lence of knives and guns. Images of a kiwi and a lion represented symbolically the debate over colonisation and repu ings de Lautour had found in second-hand shops or garage sales. These he reworked to create narratives of quirky hu played with well-known symbols, and appropriated logos of prominent corporations within his paintings. Clues to m ‘mountainscapes’ on black backgrounds, perhaps to demonstrate the colonisation of New Zealand by big business.??
His paintings have been included in numerous group exhibitions in public galleries, and Te Manawa (Palmerston Nor held solo exhibitions of his work.
Paintings from the mid to late 2000s have included the reworking of familiar symbols and motifs that the artist has u public collections in New Zealand and Australia including Te Papa, Christchurch Art Gallery, Auckland Art Gallery, Cha Tony de Lautour continues to live and work in Christchurch, New Zealand.
e University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 1988 and in 1995, just one year after his first solo exhibition, he won
the seedy side of prison and gang life - drugs, syringes, booze, tattoos of skulls, tears and ‘love-hate’, and the vioublicanism, and these appeared again in his ‘Revisionist’ series of 2000, placed in the existing landscapes of paintumour and irony, giving the old, traditional, mass-produced paintings newly-relevant life.??In the early 2000’s he meaning could be found in the smallest detail. Logos (e.g. of major sports brands, food chains, etc.) were depicted as ?De Lautour’s art is quirky and full of dark humour.
rth), The Waikato Museum of Art & History in Hamilton, and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, have
used since previously as well as the incorporation of geometric shapes.His works are included in major private and artwell Collection, National Gallery of Australia
Mark Cross Gyre Vortex Jetsam Collection Signed lower right M R Cross Oil on Canvas 1510 x 1010 mm This painting refers to the several oceanic gyres around that world, current systems that tend to collect in their vortex’s the detritus of the consumer societies which surround them. Most poignant to Pacific and to the world is the North Pacific Ocean Gyre - often called the Pacific Garbage Patch - which collects the consumer junk from North America and Asia creating huge floating masses of mainly plastic in its convergence zone North of Hawaii. This plastic does not decompose for many thousands of years but breaks down into ever smaller particles which are consumed into the food chain at every level. I have used recent garbage here for visual effect but it is a metaphor for the broken down polymers and other chemical sludge that permeate the upper columns of these oceanic vortexes. This, while using the pristinely clear waters of Niue ironically suggests what the Northern Pacific must have been like and warning the South Pacific of what could be like.
Mark Cross b 1955 Born in Auckland, Mark Cross began making art during his mid teens. At the age of 23 he moved with his family to his wife’s village, Liku, on the island of Niue. It was during these early years that a strong philosophic and stylistic foundation was established for his career as an artist. Disillusionment with the what he saw as the institutional nature of the art scene in New Zealand was one formative driving force for Cross. Niue’s isolation concentrated his mind and allowed him to develop his work in an individualistic way. Although the work is very specific in its detail, reference is restricted to the use of local elements. These are used for the creation of a timeless, lateral world where his figures act out and question the foibles of humanity but never try to proffer answers. The linear (European) perspective of history has been replaced by a cyclical understanding of time. His works, with their signature minuteness of detail and yet often spartan spaces, are characterised by an almost other-worldly quality and have the quality of visionary parables. The paintings often warn of the dire ecological imperatives that face both a small island and a planet. Mark Cross has achieved through his work a uniqueness that avoids the trappings of regionalism, so often associated with realism, and replaces them with an acutely perceptive worldview. During the nineties the artist ventured into other areas of art production with the establishment of a sculpture park in the rain forest in the east of Niue. A collaboration with his wife and several other artists, crafts people and musicians, saw the creation of the Shrine to Abundance, an installation inside a shipping container that toured Australia, New Zealand and Rarotonga. Cross’s paintings, however, are his main focus and are to be found in numerous private and corporate collections in Australasia, America and Europe. Cross now divides his time between studios in Niue and New Zealand.
Pricelist
1 Artist Unknown c 1860s Lake Taupo with Maori food store, patakaL Maori food sto $2,850 2 John Barr Clarke Hoyte Bay of I slands POA 3 William Geogre Baker Head of George SoundMaor $8,500 4 R P MacGoun Tiwai Point $1,750 5 Alfred Wilson Walsh Mother and Child outside Maori Whare $1,750 6 Trevor Lloyd Young Maori Maiden $1,250 7 Trevor Lloyd A Quiet Nook $1,250 8 Trevor Lloyd Kaimatua Falls $1,250 9 Marcus King Sunlight and Shade $3,500 10 Marcus King Landscape Hutt Valley $2,250 11 Marcus King Harbour Scene $2,100 12 Milan MrKusich Painting no 7 1959 (Landscape) POA 13 Buster Black City at Night $12,500 14 Gwyneth Richardson Grafton Road, Auckland $2,750 15 Eric Lee Johnson Taumarere Pa: Kawakawa $3,250 16 Philip Clairmont Stairway with Light POA 17 Trevor Moffitt The only Catch of the Day POA 18 Garth Tapper Steel Magnolias $14,500 19 Tony De Lautour Cartel 2 POA 20 Mark Cross Gyre Vortex Jetsam Collection $45,000
Selected text by Kyla Mackenzie
pierre peeters gallery 251 Parnell Road: Habitat Courtyard: Auckland: p.peeters@xtra.co.nz (09)3774832 www.ppg.net.nz