Rose Zeller

Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1891, d.1975

Untitled

  • c. 1925
  • Oil on board
  • Presented by Henry Maitland Tomlinson
  • 308 x 467mm
  • 89/206

Rather than focusing on the South Island’s majestic mountains, a subject popular with earlier generations of painters, Rose Zeller presents a grimy industrial yard. A lone figure is dominated by the scene that surrounds him as he toils with what may be a pile of coal. Industrial scenes such as this were popular with other New Zealand modernist artists such as Rita Angus, Bill Sutton and John Weeks. Zeller studied at the Canterbury College School of Art in the 1910s then taught at the King Edward Technical College in Dunedin before settling back in Christchurch in 1924. She taught art at the Christchurch Technical School where she is known to have actively encouraged women students from working-class backgrounds to study art and culture.

(March 2018)

Exhibition History