What’s On
Coming soon.
From Here on the Ground
Our Design Store is having a revamp!
The shop is closed instore and online while we’re getting a fresh new look. Visit us again from 9 May.
Exhibition closing soon.
Spring Time is Heart-break: Contemporary Art in Aotearoa
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Late night Wednesday until 9pm
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Notes
Godley House
The Press announced today that another iconic Banks Peninsula building is to be demolished, Godley House at Diamond Harbour.
Exhibition
Picturing the Peninsula
A selection of works by some of New Zealand’s most significant historical and contemporary artists responding to the unique landscapes of Banks Peninsula Te Pataka o Rakaihautu.
Collection
![An Otira Stream [also known as Mountain Rata]](/media/cache/b1/a6/b1a685e39ffb4d405a3f5d7f9ad77aac.jpg)
Margaret Stoddart An Otira Stream [also known as Mountain Rata]
Margaret Stoddart first made the trip along the West Coast Road over Arthur’s Pass and through the Otira Gorge in April 1896, travelling in a hired wagon with several companions. Around 1927 Stoddart completed several watercolours of the gorge including An Otira Stream (also known as Mountain rata). In this work the artist combines her interest in flower painting with landscape to complete a vibrant vision of southern rata in full bloom amongst the rugged Otira terrain. In the summer months of January and February the mountain slopes of the Otira Gorge come alive with the crimson flowers of southern rata.
Collection
Margaret Stoddart Bush Fire, Paraparaumu
Perhaps the most effective way to clear the native forest that stood in the way of developing farmland was to set fire to it – something poignantly captured here by Margaret Stoddart. The landscape of Paraparaumu, and the Tararua mountain ranges beyond, was home to one of Aotearoa’s most prized birds, the huia. Now extinct, when Stoddart painted this work around 1908, the last official sighting of huia had been recorded a year earlier. Huia were prized for their distinctive tail feathers by Māori and Pākehā, and were relentlessly hunted to extinction in the early 1900s to satisfy a lucrative trade in their skins for stuffed specimens and their beaks for grim jewellery.
Ship Nails and Tail Feathers, 10 June – 22 October 2023
Collection
Margaret Stoddart Camiers, France
Nature's Own Voice, 6 February - 26 July 2009
Margaret Stoddart worked exclusively as a watercolourist and painted plein-air landscapes from early in her career. Her work developed towards an impressionistic style while she was based in Europe between 1898 and 1906. At this time she began exploring the various atmospheric effects experienced while painting plein-air, as seen in Camiers, France, where Stoddart uses very wet washes of colour to capture the hazy conditions of the scene.
Collection
Margaret Stoddart Native Clematis
Margaret Stoddart established a strong reputation for the distinctive, increasingly atmospheric watercolour painting style she developed during her nine years abroad from 1898. Stoddart spent most of her childhood in the rural setting of Te Waipapa Diamond Harbour, followed by three years with her family in Edinburgh from 1876 before they settled in Christchurch in 1880. She and her three sisters enrolled at the Canterbury College School of Art in 1882, its founding year; their father, Mark Stoddart, died in 1885.
After the family’s return to Diamond Harbour in 1897, Margaret left to extend her career in Europe; basing herself in Cornwall at the St Ives artists’ colony. As well as taking further expert tuition, she travelled extensively through England, Norway, France, Switzerland and Italy, where she spent most of her final year away. Stoddart exhibited her flower paintings and landscapes to critical success in Paris and at English commercial and public galleries, including the Royal Academy, before returning home in 1906.
(The Moon and the Manor House, 12 November 2021 – 1 May 2022)
Collection
Margaret Stoddart Diamond Harbour
Margaret Stoddart was born in Te Waipapa / Diamond Harbour. Her father gave the harbour its English name after its sparkling waters, and commissioned the jetty’s construction in about 1857. Stoddart spent nine years in Europe studying, painting and exhibiting. When she returned home in 1906 she brought with her a skilful impressionist approach to her work. Stoddart was a prolific watercolourist who favoured coastal locations. At her first solo exhibition at the Canterbury Society of Arts in 1911, most of the fifty works shown had been painted near her family’s home at Diamond Harbour. However, as a reviewer for the Lyttelton Times noted, “New Brighton has received a share of attention, and perhaps it is shown at its best during a storm, gusts of wind howling across the Estuary, bending the tussock and grass on the beach.”
(Te Wheke, 2020)
Collection
Margaret Stoddart Godley House, Diamond Harbour
On her return from Europe in 1907, Margaret Stoddart lived in Godley House with her mother and sister and remained there until the family’s Diamond Harbour estate was sold off in 1913. The family were keen gardeners, as can be seen by the charming cottage garden. This is one of a number of paintings Stoddart did in Diamond Harbour and shows the style she had developed during her time in Europe. The expressive opaque watercolour treatment is combined with fine fluid washes applied in a quick and direct manner, out of doors before the subject. Stoddart was born in Diamond Harbour, Christchurch, but in 1876 the family sailed for Britain and she received her early education in Edinburgh. The family returned to New Zealand in 1879 and in 1882 Stoddart enrolled at the Canterbury College School of Art. She was a founding member of the Palette Club whose members were concerned with painting out of doors. She travelled to Europe in 1898.