B.

Born in 1885, Edith Collier was the oldest of ten children growing up in a prosperous and spacious Wanganui home at the turn of the century. Her father was intensely musical and encouraged all the children to enjoy his musical passion to the extent they formed a quartet in which Edith played the cello.

In 1903 Edith commenced her studies in art at the Wanganui Technical School producing exquisite charcoal drawings from plaster casts of fish and of classical heads. Encouraged by admirers Edith left for England in 1912 at the age of 27, following in the tradition of expatriatism, which was a mark of artistic life in New Zealand during these days. Edith enrolled at the St Johns Wood School of Art and ten months after her arrival was exhibiting in the Art School Sketch Club.

For the next eight years Edith travelled around England and Ireland, painting landscapes, fishermen and portraits of friends with whom she stayed; rarely exhibiting and periodically worked with another New Zealand expatriate Frances Hodgkins.

Her return to New Zealand in 1921 was to an artistic environment indifferent even hostile to her work, with few artistic friends to encourage her. Although mature and an experimental painter respected by painter friends in England, Edith despaired in her native home, laid her brushes aside for almost five years and turned her energy to domestic concerns, nursing her family.

Quietly, Edith took to painting again and between 1922-32 produced all her remaining New Zealand landscapes and family portraits. After her father's death, Edith inherited a substantial portion of her father's estate and with a regular income the incentive to paint appears to have gone.

This exhibition of 75 paintings and drawings was organised by the Sarjeant Art Sallery Wanganui and is toured with the assistance of the New Zealand Art Gallery Directors' Council and the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand.

('Edith Collier in Retrospect', Bulletin, No.18, November/December 1981, p.3)