Ivy Fife
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1903, d.1976
Railway Crossing, Canterbury
- c. 1945
- Oil on canvas on board
- Purchased 1994
- 365 x 414mm
- 94/51
- View on google maps
Location: Arcade
Tags: fences, gates, grade crossings, ladders, landscapes (representations), mountains, railroads (infrastructure), signs (declatory or advertising artifacts), snow (precipitation), trees, utility poles, words
Many artists of Ivy Fife’s generation enjoyed escaping Ōtautahi Christchurch for the exceptional natural beauty of the plains, mountains and coastlines that surround the city. Fife wrote of her sketching trips to Cass: I set out laden with canvases, easel, and well stocked paint box. Train or bus travel was my only means of transport, so large paintings were out of the question. Struggling on to the midnight goods train (the “Perishable” as it was called) and at Springfield transferring to the guard’s van of a slower train and arriving at Cass about 2 or 3 a.m. pitch black morning and very still and frightening although it was exciting. Some of us used to rent an old house up there and really roughed it. The foothills of the mountains were a great draw, cold mountainous streams splashing over interesting rocks. It was fun sitting on a rock in mid stream and painting a watercolour – just dipping one’s brush in the stream. My feet used to get numb with the cold water. Then the mountains – great heavy mounds of rock, heavy and grand cloud formations changing the appearance of everything so quickly; one just had to go for the basics.
(He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil, 2025)
Exhibition History
Related reading: In the Vast Emptiness
Notes
Canterbury Landscape by Colin McCahon
In 2014 we purchased an important landscape work by Colin McCahon. Curator Peter Vangioni speaks about this new addition to Christchurch Art Gallery’s collection.
Notes
Mountains, Cass by Rita Angus
This article first appeared as 'The wonders of waterolours' in The Press on 11 August 2015.
Notes
100 years of the Cass field station
Last weekend the University of Canterbury Biology Department celebrated the 100th anniversary of the field station at Cass with a symposium on Cass followed up with a field trip to the station.
Notes
Wainui - to the west of the long harbour
"I like Wainui, quaint, charming, rather like a Pieter Bruegel subject with the haymaking in progress." Rita Angus to Douglas Lilburn, 1943
Notes
Another nor’wester descends on Canterbury
Some people fear them, others revel in the unforgiving dry heat – love them or hate them the legendary Canterbury nor'wester is one of the defining features of this region in the summer months and there is a real doozy blowing outside at the moment.
Notes
Heart in the high country: Austen Deans (1915 - 2011)
For Austen Deans, OBE, painting was an expression of his love of the outdoors and, in particular, the Canterbury high country.
Notes
Sutton high-fives McCahon
Nothing made it into a W.A. Sutton painting by accident, and the white line that rises diagonally through the sky in Plantation Series II is no exception.
Notes
CASS
This week 77 years ago Rita Angus visited Cass on a sketching holiday with Louise Henderson and Julia Scarvell that resulted in several paintings including the Christchurch Art Gallery's Cass.
Notes
CASS
André Hemer's exhibition CASS is well worth a visit if you are near the Christchurch Art Gallery's space above NG on Madras street.
Article
Exquisite Treasure Revealed
Canterbury Museum holds two albums compiled by Diamond Harbour artist Margaret Stoddart. The older of the two, containing images featured in this Bulletin, and itself currently exhibited in the Gallery, covers the period 1886–96. The album is handsomely bound in maroon, and stamped M.O.S. in gold. It contains a sort of travelogue by way of black and white photographs set amongst decorative painting, mostly of native flora, with some locality and date information.