Elizabeth Kelly was a very successful portrait painter, completing many commissions from wealthy Christchurch residents. Less well known is her work as a landscape artist and her interest in painting outdoors. Kelly and her husband, fellow artist Cecil Kelly, spent the summer of 1921 when this work was completed based in Cornwall, England. This pastoral scene, with the loosely applied wet washes of colour used to render workers forming hay into stooks in full sunlight, highlights the sense of freedom that Kelly experienced when painting outdoors and contrasts vividly with the more restrained approach of her studio-based portrait painting.

(Turn, Turn, Turn: A Year in Art, 27 July 2019 – 8 March 2020)