B.
Grand Dame
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It's 120 years since the New Zealand crime writer, theatre director and artist Ngaio Marsh (1895 - 1982) was born just up the road.
Her parents rented a house in Carlton Mill before moving to Valley Road, Cashmere, where the family home has been converted into a museum. Known internationally for her 32 crime novels featuring Inspector Roderick Alleyn, a gentleman detective working for the London's Metropolitan Police, round here we also know her as an artist, who attended Canterbury College School of Art as a part-time student between 1913 and 1919. She shared a Cashel Street studio with fellow students who, like her, were interested in innovative artistic styles and approaches and formed friendships with several, including Evelyn Page and Olivia Spencer Bower. This 1934 painting by Spencer Bower shows her at her easel, painting out in the open air, on one of the sketching trips they undertook into the countryside.
Marsh was a member of Christchurch's influential 'The Group', and is pictured (in beret) at the centre of this photograph of its members taken by Spencer Bower in 1936.
'The Group' 1936. Photograph: Olivia Spencer Bower. Olivia Spencer Bower Archive, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.
She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1966 for her contributions to literature and theatre and The University of Canterbury awarded her an honorary degree in literature in 1962, naming its new theatre after her in 1967 (she directed the inaugural performance there of Twelfth Night). A 1977 documentary on her life can be seen on New Zealand On Screen here. Credited by Newsweek with 'the best whodunnits ever written', she is regarded as one of the great 'Queen of Crime', alongside such international counterparts as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham. It's nice to see Marsh honoured in today's Google searchbar (for New Zealand users). If you click on 'Google', you'll open up an animated version of this image.
Google seachbar image for 23/4/2015 of Dame Ngaio Marsh
Related
Collection
Paul Johns Dame Ngaio Marsh
Born in Christchurch, Dame Ngaio Marsh (1895-1982) was well known locally for her contribution to the theatre, particularly for her Shakespearean productions. Marsh also wrote 32 classic English detective novels and was acclaimed a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. Paul Johns’ portrait, done in the year Marsh died, focuses on her face, creating a strongly psychological work. Johns has eliminated most of the detail of the photograph he worked from, then highlighted Marsh's face with graphic black outlines. The work reveals the influence of Andy Warhol's famous 'factory-style' screen-printed photographs, but the painterly marks add life to the commercial feel of the screen-printed portrait. Throughout his career Johns has explored a variety of photographic and print methods, sometimes combining the two.
Johns was born in Christchurch and graduated from the University of Canterbury in 1974. He has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions throughout New Zealand since 1969 and his work is represented in the collections of several of New Zealand's major public art galleries.
Collection
Olivia Spencer Bower Ngaio Marsh Painting
Two of Canterbury’s most successful twentieth-century creatives are brought together in Olivia Spencer Bower’s wonderful plein air study of her friend Ngaio Marsh painting outdoors. Both were involved with the Group (a collection of progressive artists based in Christchurch) during the 1930s. Marsh went on to become a world-renowned crime writer and theatre director while Spencer Bower is today recognised as one of the best watercolourists of her generation. Depicting Marsh painting at an easel under the bright summer sun, Ngaio Marsh painting highlights the enjoyment these two experienced when they escaped the urban environs of Christchurch for the openness of the Canterbury countryside.
(Our Collection: 19th and 20th Century New Zealand Art, 2018)