Sentinels is a rare, early work by Thames, Coromandel-born Rhona Haszard. It shows her clear artistic vision and ability to make a sensitive, painterly response to a specific location. Haszard painted this impressionistic coastal landscape while at Canterbury College School of Art, where she distinguished herself as a star pupil between 1919 and 1924. This work was first shown in the Canterbury Society of Arts’ annual exhibition in 1923. Haszard left New Zealand two years later and began to make her mark as an artist in Europe, exhibiting in France, England and Egypt, where she moved in 1927 and died tragically young in 1931.

(Te Wheke, 2020)