Dorothy Kate Richmond

Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1861, d.1935

Track Over The Brow Of A Hill

  • 1908
  • Watercolour
  • Donated from the Canterbury Public Library Collection, 2001
  • 203 x 230mm
  • 2002/188

Like Isabel and Frances Hodgkins, Dorothy Richmond grew up in the shadow of an artist father who no doubt encouraged his daughter to take up the brush. Richmond had a privileged upbringing including a lot of international travel and she furthered her education in England and Europe from a young age. During the mid 1890s she studied under James Nairn in Wellington and was a central figure in the Wellington Sketch Club and the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. By 1901 she was in England working alongside both Frances Hodgkins and Margaret Stoddart, sharing their interests in plein-air painting. Track Over the Brow of a Hill highlights the artist’s love of painting outdoors; wet washes of colour loaded onto dampened paper in a free and vibrant manner. (March 2018)

Exhibition History

earlier labels about this work
  • Nature's Own Voice' 6 February - 22 August 2009

    Dorothy Kate Richmond first became interested in plein-air painting when she studied under James Nairn in 1896. This interest was further developed when, in1898, she studied under Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes at the Newlyn School ofArt in Cornwall, England. Track over the brow of a hill displays her keen sense of observation while working outdoors and her ability to translate this directly using the watercolour medium.

  • Although the precise location of this scene is not known, it is likely to be in the Wellington area, where Dorothy Kate Richmond was living at the time it was painted. Typically, she has simplified her colour range and the forms to emphasise the structures of the landscape. Richmond's robust, fluid style was influenced by Stanhope (1857-1947) and Elizabeth Forbes (1859-1912), with whom she studied in 1898 at the Newlyn School of Art, in Cornwall, England. Born in Auckland, Dorothy was the daughter of the watercolour artist James Crowe Richmond. From 1873 she travelled in Europe with her father and, in 1878, was awarded a scholarship to the Slade School of Art in London. When she returned to New Zealand she taught at Nelson College for Girls but, on the death of her father in 1898, returned to England. In 1903 Richmond opened a studio in Wellington and became a central figure in the city's art circles.

    (Label date unknown)