Robert Ellis: Wai Manawa
Robert Ellis: Wai Manawa
20.04.23 — 27.05.23
Monday to Friday | 10am — 5pm Saturday | 11am — 3pm
Mark Hutchins-Pond Specialist, Art mark@webbs.co.nz
+64 4 555 6011
Karen Rigby
Business Manager
karen@webbs.co.nz
+64 4 555 6011
23 Marion Street
Te Aro
Wellington 6011
webbs.co.nz
Over the course of seven decades of artistic practice, Robert Ellis produced a distinctive and historically significant body of work. Robert Ellis: Wai Manawa brings together a remarkable selection of never before exhibited works on paper. This exhibition has been sourced from Ellis’s estate, and it features a stunning range of artworks that showcase the skill and vision of one of Aotearoa’s preeminent artists. Ellis was a master draftsman, and these exceptionally crafted drawings and paintings demonstrate his sophisticated technical abilities and artistic sensibility. Ellis was born in England in 1929. He trained at the Northampton School of Art from 1944 - 1947, and the Royal College of Art in London from 1949 – 1953, gaining a rich depth of knowledge that was to inform his lifelong pursuit of painting. In the two years between, he completed National Service with the photographic unit of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command – an experience that likely informed the aerial views evident in his later work. Ellis migrated to New Zealand in the 1950s and took up a lecturing role at Elam School of Fine Arts. He chose to live in Birkenhead on Auckland’s North Shore because of its close proximity to the rapidly developing motorway and city harbour bridge project. This became part of his daily experience and shaped his most distinctive painting motif. The area that the artist called home is known in te reo as Wai Manawa – which translates to ‘the source of the water’. The title of the exhibition is both an acknowledgement of the area Ellis called home, and a poetic inference to works on paper as the source of the artist’s creative production.
Ellis is a major national figure in modernist painting. His work is held in the highest esteem by private and institutional collectors alike. Robert Ellis: Wai Manawa shows another aspect of his storied artistic oeuvre.
— Dr. Julian McKinnon
signed Robert Ellis and dated ‘62 in ink lower right
330 × 430mm
Price $5,000
1 Robert Ellis untitled 1962 acrylic on paper
signed Robert Ellis and dated ‘68 in brushpoint lower left 500 × 305mm
Price $5,000
2 Robert Ellis untitled 1967 acrylic on board
signed Robert Ellis and dated 1968 in brushpoint lower right
500 × 700mm
Price $6,000
3 Robert Ellis untitled 1967
acrylic on paper
signed Robert Ellis and dated ‘62 in ink lower right
635 × 550mm
Price $6,000
4 Robert Ellis untitled 1962 acrylic on paper
signed Robert Ellis and dated ‘62 in ink lower right
775 × 525mm
Price $6,000
5 Robert Ellis untitled 1961 acrylic on paper
signed Robert Ellis and dated ‘62 in ink lower left 740
Price $6,000
6 Robert Ellis untitled 1962 acrylic on paper
× 575mm
7 Robert Ellis
untitled 1961
acrylic on board
signed Robert Ellis and dated 1961 in ink lower right
540 × 755mm
Price $6,000
8
Robert Ellis
Landscape - North Africa
1962
acrylic on board
signed Robert Ellis and dated ‘62 in ink lower left; signed Robert Ellis and inscribed Landscape - North Africa verso
500 × 600mm
Price $6,000
9 Robert Ellis untitled 1968
signed Robert Ellis and dated 1968 in ink lower left
755 × 555mm
Price $6,000
acrylic and ink on paperuntitled 1968
acrylic
signed Robert Ellis and dated 1968 in ink lower right
760 × 560mm
Price $6,000
10 Robert Ellis and ink on paper1969
760
Price $6,000
1964
Price $6,000
11
Robert Ellis City & River
acrylic and graphite on paper signed Robert Ellis, dated ‘96 and inscribed City & River in graphite lower right
× 560mm
12 Robert Ellis City & River
acrylic and graphite on paper signed Robert Ellis, dated ‘64 and inscribed City & River in graphite lower right
565 × 760mm
1964
Price $6,000
14 Robert Ellis untitled 1963
acrylic and graphite on paper
signed Robert Ellis and dated 1968 in ink in lower right
570 × 775mm
Price $6,000
Mark Hutchins-Pond Specialist, Art +64 22 095 5610 mark@webbs.co.nz
Karen Rigby
Business Manager
+64 22 344 5610
karen@webbs.co.nz
Auctions Private Sales Valuations webbs.co.nz
wellington 23 Marion Street Te Aro Wellington, 6011
