Margaret Stoddart
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1865, d.1934
Diamond Harbour
- 1909
- Watercolour
- Christchurch Art Gallery Foundation Collection, purchased 1996
- 255 x 355mm
- L86/93
- View on google maps
Tags: boats, flowers (plants), harbors, hills, jetties, landscapes (representations), natural landscapes, seas, trees
About the artist
Margaret Stoddart, from The Weekly Press 9 June 1909
Margaret Stoddart was born in Te Waipapa / Diamond Harbour. Her father gave the harbour its English name after its sparkling waters, and commissioned the jetty’s construction in about 1857. Stoddart spent nine years in Europe studying, painting and exhibiting. When she returned home in 1906 she brought with her a skilful impressionist approach to her work. Stoddart was a prolific watercolourist who favoured coastal locations. At her first solo exhibition at the Canterbury Society of Arts in 1911, most of the fifty works shown had been painted near her family’s home at Diamond Harbour. However, as a reviewer for the Lyttelton Times noted, “New Brighton has received a share of attention, and perhaps it is shown at its best during a storm, gusts of wind howling across the Estuary, bending the tussock and grass on the beach.”
(Te Wheke, 2020)
Exhibition History
Picturing the Peninsula, 21 April - 22 July 2007
Diamond Harbour lies on the South side of Lyttelton harbour across from the town of Lyttelton between Purau Bay and Charteris Bay. It was named by the artist’s father, Mark Stoddart, from “the glitter of the sun-track on the water, always very noticeable from that side of the harbour.” This view chosen by Margaret Stoddart looks out across Diamond Harbour from above the wharf and is in the artist’s mature style being completed soon after her return home in 1907 after studying art abroad.
Stoddart was born and grew up in Diamond Harbour where her father had settled in 1851. She regularly painted in the region and often incorporated flowers into the landscape such as the blossoms seen in this work.
Related reading: Margaret Stoddart: Nature's Artist
Notes
New Brighton by Margaret Stoddart
This article first appeared as 'Stoddart: an artist for all seasons' in The Press on 17 November 2015.
Notes
An Otira stream (also known as Mountain Rata) by Margaret Stoddart
This article first appeared as 'Otira colour captured in all its summer glory' in The Press on 28 February 2014.
Notes
Godley House, Diamond Harbour by Margaret Stoddart
This article first appeared as 'Stoddart's summer' in The Press on 15 February 2013.
Notes
Margaret Stoddart: born Diamond Harbour 3 October, 1865.
While the Gallery remains closed to the public the permanent collection continues to grow with several generous gifts and bequests being received recently.
Notes
Diamond that shines
The ruins of Diamond Harbour's Godley House may have finally been removed but the stunning sparkling views out across Lyttelton Harbour remain.
Notes
Happy birthday Margaret
Margaret Stoddart was born on this day in 1865 at Diamond Harbour. Here she is in 1909:
Notes
Godley House
The Press announced today that another iconic Banks Peninsula building is to be demolished, Godley House at Diamond Harbour.
Notes
The Watercolour Collection
The Gallery's Watercolour Collection had modest beginnings, but over the past 70 years it has grown steadily by gift and purchase and, of all the Collections, still maintains a largely traditional emphasis. When the Gallery opened in June 1932, just 28 of the 128 paintings on display were watercolours and, of these, 11 were by British artists and 17 by New Zealanders. Among the mostly nineteenth century British watercolours were those by Helen Allingham, Edgar Bundy, Matthew Hale, Laura Knight, William Lee Hankey and Ernest Waterlow. In contrast, the New Zealand watercolours were by mostly contemporary or early twentieth century artists and included works by James Cook, Olivia Spencer Bower, Margaret Stoddart, Maude Sherwood, Eleanor Hughes and Alfred Walsh. The foundation Watercolour Collection included two paintings of larger than usual dimensions. William Lee Hankey's We've been in the Meadows all day (1184 x 878mm) and Charles N. Worsley's Mount Sefton (996 x 1105mm) are still greater in scale than any other work in the Watercolour Collection.
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.
Collection
Margaret Stoddart Bush Fire, Paraparaumu
Environmentalists in Aotearoa New Zealand have been fighting to protect our forests from as early as the 1860s. In 1863, the Kīngitanga Te Hokioi newspaper urged readers to: “cease setting fire to the forests lest the trees be consumed; lest there be no more trees for our descendants”. Five years later, Waitaha Canterbury MP and conservationist Thomas Potts gave a speech in parliament asking for assessment, care and protection of the forests. Some forty years later, Margaret Stoddart painted this watercolour in Paraparaumu on the Kāpiti Coast, showing smoke billowing from what remains of dense native bush that appears to be being cleared for agriculture. This was an unusual subject for Stoddart, far removed from the still-life subjects for which she became so highly regarded, and perhaps reveals her anxiety about the continuing deforestation of Aotearoa.
Kīngitanga ~ the King Movement which developed in the 1850s to stop the loss of land to colonists, maintain law and order and promote traditional values and culture
He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)