Name: Janet Abbott: Exploring Canterbury Painting 1890-1950
Location: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū

Janet Abbott: Exploring Canterbury Painting 1890-1950

Petrus van der Velden Mount Rolleston and the Otira River 1893. Oil on canvas. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 1965

Talk

Past event

Philip Carter Family Auditorium

Free

Janet Abott traces the progress of landscape painting in Waitaha Canterbury from van der Velden to the painters of the Canterbury School of regional painting.

Canterbury was the centre of artistic activity in Aotearoa New Zealand between 1900 and 1950, and landscape painting was the predominant genre. This illustrated talk will look at the many landscape sites around Ōtautahi Christchurch, Banks Peninsula and the South Island. Intrepid groups of painters set up summer camps on the Kaikōura coast capturing wild seascapes. They also followed the rail west to Cass, Arthur's Pass, Otira, and the West Coast. The talk will trace the progress of landscape from early works in the tradition of the sublime and picturesque to van der Velden’s romantic works, before looking at the early Canterbury School works of Cecil and Elizabeth Kelly, Sydney Thompson and Archibald Nicoll, and then their students including Bill Sutton and Rita Angus. All these artists demonstrate the strong artistic culture of Canterbury.

Join us for this lecture as part of the Heritage Festival.

Related reading: canterbury painting, Free

Exhibition

Van der Velden: Otira

11 February – 22 February 2011

This exhibition brings together a comprehensive selection of Van der Velden's paintings portraying the wild, untouched natural beauty of the Otira region's mountainous landscape.

Collection

Elizabeth Kelly Self Portrait

Christchurch artist Annie Elizabeth Kelly was one of the earliest professional artists to establish themselves in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the first New Zealand woman to be awarded a CBE for services to art.

Kelly painted this early self-portrait when she was forging a career as a portrait painter. She had just moved into her first studio at 218 Hereford Street in the central city.

Painted from reflection, Kelly’s direct gaze is confident, painted loosely in an impressionistic style but with sharp, idealised facial features, showing the influence of the Aesthetic movement from her studies at the Canterbury College School of Art. Painting herself in a traditional European bonnet and using muted brown colours suggestive of the old masters, a fashionable style influenced by Petrus Van der Velden, this painting advertised her skills as she made her debut as a portrait artist.

(The Moon and the Manor House, 12 November 2021 – 1 May 2022)

Collection

Petrus van der Velden Mountain Stream, Otira Gorge

The Rotterdam-born Petrus van der Velden arrived in New Zealand in 1890. Following his first visit to Otira Gorge in January 1891, he became engrossed with this subject, and painted its powerful, surging torrents many times over the next two years.

This painting was purchased by Gilbert Anderson, a leader in New Zealand’s frozen meat industry, also involved with the Canterbury Society of Arts. Anderson sold it to the Society in 1912; it was purchased from them in 1996 through the Community Trust and Christchurch Art Gallery Trust.

(Treasury: A Generous Legacy, 18 December 2015 – 27 November 2016)