Olivia Spencer Bower
England / Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1905, d.1982
The Woolshed, Claxby - Shearing Time
- c. 1936
- Watercolour
- Purchased, 1987
- 350 x 450mm
- 87/08
- View on google maps
Location: Contemporary Collections Gallery
Tags: farming, people (agents), sheds (storage structures), wash technique, woolsheds, workers
Olivia Spencer Bower lived for many years with her brother at Claxby, a sheep farm near Swannanoa in Waitaha Canterbury. From here, she made many sketching expeditions up into the high country, along the Waimakariri River and along both coasts of Te Waipounamu South Island. Daily life on the farm at Claxby also featured in many of her works during this period. In this watercolour, Spencer Bower’s lively brushwork captures the energy and hum of the woolshed at shearing time.
(He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil, 2025)
Exhibition History
Beneath the Ranges, 18 February – 23 October 2017](https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/exhibitions/beneath-the-ranges)
After two and a half years in Europe, including a year at the Slade School of Art in London, Olivia Spencer Bower returned to New Zealand in December 1931. While her childhood had been in England, most of her teen years and young adulthood were in Christchurch, where she’d studied at the Canterbury College School of Art. Following her return, she lived with her brother and parents at Claxby, a sheep farm near Swannanoa on the Canterbury plains, established by her maternal grandfather in 1853. Claxby became her home base for the next eleven years.