Artist Unknown
Nathaniel Webb, Esq., of Roundhill Grange, Charlton Musgrove, Somerset
- c. 1715
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of Sally Fox in memory of her father, John Jekyll Cuddon, 2007
- 1265 x 1025mm
- 2007/049
Tags: buttons (fasteners), hats, men (male humans), people (agents), politicians, portraits, red (color), slavery, swords, wigs
Nathaniel Webb, the subject of this striking 300-year-old portrait, was a Bristol merchant who – like many of his peers in this period – is known to have made a vast fortune through West Indies sugar and slavery.
Webb’s portrait was donated in 2007 by a direct descendant, in honour of her father John Jekyll Cuddon, a respected Christchurch chartered accountant. The painting came to New Zealand with Henry Joseph C. Jekyll, who immigrated to Canterbury in 1862, and in 1880 purchased a large parcel of farmland beyond the edges of Christchurch, naming it Dallington after an old family estate.
(Treasury: A Generous Legacy, 18 December 2015 – 27 November 2016)
Exhibition History
Related reading: Treasury: a generous legacy
Article
Trove
Recounting the untold stories behind some of the works in the exhibition Treasury: A Generous Legacy, curator Ken Hall also underlines the value of art philanthropy.
Exhibition
Treasury: A Generous Legacy
Stunning proof of the impact of generosity on the Christchurch collection.
Commentary
The wisdom of crowds
In recent years, crowdfunding and crowdsourcing have become big news in the arts. By providing a funding model that enables would-be-investors to become involved in the production of new works, they have altered traditional models of patronage. Musicians, designers, dancers and visual artists are inviting the public to finance their projects via the internet. The public are also being asked to provide wealth in the form of cultural capital through crowdsourcing projects. The Gallery has been involved in two online crowdfunding ventures – a project with a public art focus around our 10th birthday celebrations, and the purchase of a major sculpture for the city. But, although these projects have been made possible by the internet, the concept behind the funding model is certainly not new. The rise of online crowdfunding platforms also raises important questions about the role of the state in the funding and generation of artwork, and the democratisation of tastemaking. How are models of supply and demand affected? Does the freedom from more traditional funding models allow greater innovation? Do 'serious' artists even ask for money? It's a big topic, and one that is undoubtedly shaping up in PhD theses around the world already. Bulletin asked a few commentators for their thoughts on the matter.
Article
The East India Company man: Brigadier-General Alexander Walker
Getting to know people can take time. While preparing for a future exhibition of early portraits from the collection, I'm becoming acquainted with Alexander Walker, and finding him a rewarding subject. Painted in 1819 by the leading Scottish portraitist of his day, Sir Henry Raeburn, Walker's portrait is wrought with Raeburn's characteristic blend of painterly vigour and attentive care and conveys the impression of a well-captured likeness.
Collection
Charles Frederick Goldie Ina te Papatahi, a Ngāpuhi Chieftainess (Te Ngahengahe, Ngāpuhi)
Ina te Papatahi lived at the Waipapa Māori hostel in Mechanics Bay, Tāmakimakaurau / Auckland, not far from Charles Goldie’s Hobson Street studio. She sat for him many times, the first time in 1902. The niece of prominent Ngāpuhi rangatira (chiefs) Eruera Maihi Patuone and Tāmati Waka Nene, both signatories of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, she was well-connected and introduced Goldie to many other Māori who agreed to sit for him. Ina te Papatahi was later remembered by Goldie’s friend, the writer and historian James Cowan, for her “very likeable nature”, “keen sense of humour” and the “great interest [she took] in the painting of her portrait”.
(Te Wheke, 2020)
Collection
Frances Hodgkins Pleasure Garden
“You say in yr last [letter] that I will not tag on to Colonial life after staying away so long – you surely don’t expect & want me to settle down into a Maiden Aunt do you & throw up career & ambition & lose the precious ground I have gained – you are much too dear and unselfish for that I am sure. I am coming out merely to see you & Sis & the children, to be with you for a while & then to return to my work like any man of business. To make you happy I must be happy myself. I want to see you badly & feel I must come soon at no matter what sacrifice. But do realise Mother that it’s on this side of the world that my work and future career lie. I grieve sometimes that you do not understand this more.” – Frances Hodgkins, excerpt from a letter to her mother, Rachel Hodgkins, 1911
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Collection
Gertrude Demain Hammond A Reading from Plato
Gertrude Demain Hammond was a prolific book illustrator whose formal art training began in 1879 at the Lambeth School of Art, alongside her sister Christiana, and continued at the Royal Academy Schools from 1885. She first exhibited in the academy’s prestigious annual summer show in 1886. In 1891 she sold a painting from the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours to the Empress Frederick of Germany – Queen Victoria’s eldest child, Princess Victoria – and in 1896 was elected to the institute. Gertrude and Christiana were recognised in the 1890s as Britain’s leading women illustrators. After Gertrude’s marriage in 1898, the sisters lived and worked from the same address at St Paul’s Studios, Hammersmith – a grand suite of Arts and Crafts studio apartments established as an urban artists’ colony.
A Reading from Plato was shown at the Royal Academy in 1903 before being sent to Christchurch for the 1906–07 New Zealand International Exhibition, where it was purchased by local art collector James Jamieson who, with his brother William, ran one of the country’s largest construction companies.
(The Moon and the Manor House, 12 November 2021 – 1 May 2022)
Collection
Gerrit Dou The Physician
Gerrit Dou was Rembrandt van Rijn’s earliest and most successful student, and became highly sought after by European royalty and aristocratic patrons for his captivating, highly detailed works. His paintings were packed with intriguing elements waiting to be read. Here, a physician based on Dou himself carefully analyses a jar of urine for a pregnancy test.
(Out of Time, 23 September 2023 – 28 April 2024)
Collection
William Powell Frith Girl with a Mask
Although apparently portraying a refined Venetian lady – a young woman with carnival mask, black veil and shawl – this work was painted not in Italy, but England. Yorkshire-born William Frith, who became extremely well-known for his large, densely populated panoramas of contemporary English life, also painted small costume studies early in his career, often modelled on literary figures. Frith’s model in this work, painted in 1846, strongly resembles his wife Isabelle (née Baker), whom he married in York in June 1845; Isabelle sat for him several times. Isabelle Frith became a close friend and confidante of Catherine Dickens, wife of author Charles, who (although a friend of her husband’s) she later banned from entering their London home; this following the 1858 breakup of the Dickens’ marriage. The Frith marriage was also ‘troubled’: Isabelle had 12 children to William from 1846–60; his mistress Mary Alford had six more to him from 1855. (He married Mary in 1881, a year after the death of Isabelle.)
(The Weight of Sunlight, 16 September 2017 - 16 September 2018)
Collection
George Henry The Black Hat
In about 1901, having established a strong reputation with his painting in Scotland, the Glasgow-based George Henry relocated to London, where he began to establish a successful society portrait practice.
The Black Hat – possibly the work exhibited to acclaim as ‘La dame au chapeau noir’ at the Royal Glasgow Institute in 1904 – was one of twelve paintings selected in 1911 by the English artist Niels Lund to be purchased for the Canterbury Society of Arts. Its acquisition in 1912 was enabled through a newly agreed £50 annual subsidy from the Christchurch City Council; the society presented the painting to the city's new public gallery in 1932.
(Treasury: A Generous Legacy, 18 December 2015 – 27 November 2016)
Collection
Meindert Hobbema A Wooded Landscape with Peasants on a Path and an Angler at a Stream
Although under-recognised in his own lifetime, Amsterdam-based Meindert Hobbema is now seen as one of the greatest landscape painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Hobbema’s exclusive focus on countryside relates to the extraordinary growth of Dutch cities and towns in this period, and a newfound desire for idealised depictions of rural life.
(Out of Time, 23 September 2023 – 28 April 2024)
Collection
Frances Hodgkins Unshatterable (Belgian Refugees)
The Dunedin-born Frances Hodgkins was running her own watercolour painting school in Paris when World War I broke out in 1914. She relocated to St. Ives in Cornwall, where she found many displaced Belgian families also living, and painted this work in response to their wretched plight. Unshatterable, one of her first oil paintings, was exhibited in London in 1916 and purchased by the painter Sir Cedric Morris. Dr Rodney Wilson, the Gallery’s director in 1980, visited Morris, and with assistance from the National Art Collections Fund, a British art charity, successfully secured this work for the Christchurch collection.
(Treasury: A Generous Legacy, 18 December 2015 – 27 November 2016)
Collection
Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot Soldiers in a Village
Between 1618 and 1648, Europe was thrown into turmoil by the Thirty Years’ War – a bitter conflict that raged between Catholic and Protestant states. It was renowned for the vicious fighting often brought about by the large mercenary armies employed on both sides. Here, Droochsloot depicts the confiscations and pillaging by mercenary soldiers as they drive Dutch villagers from their homes.
(New Dawn Fades, November 2018)
Collection
Alfred Drury The Age of innocence
Alfred Drury modelled this sculptural bust after a friend’s daughter, and made numerous variations of it between 1897 and 1918. Most were cast in bronze, but some were carved in white marble. The Age of Innocence was first shown in Aotearoa New Zealand in 1903 and 1904 when Drury was completing a massive commemorative statue of Queen Victoria, commissioned for Wellington and unveiled in 1905. This version was purchased by the Canterbury Society of Arts at the 1906–07 exhibition, and is seen as reflecting the goals of the British New Sculpture movement, whose followers sought greater naturalism and symbolic qualities than found in the prevailing neoclassical approach of the time.
(Ship Nails and Tail Feathers, 10 June – 22 October 2023)