Andreas Cellarius Hypothesis Ptolemaica Sive Communis Planetarum Motus Per Eccentricos Et Epicyclos Demonstrans [The Ptolemaic Hypothesis or Common Representation Demonstrating the Planetary Motions through Eccentrics and Epicycles] 1661. Hand-coloured engraving. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, William A. Sutton bequest, 2000
22 September 2023 – 28 April 2024
Experience the storytelling power of art.
Take a meandering walk through this lively selection from the Gallery's historical collection, filled with surprises that offer opportunities for imaginative time travel. From classical antiquity through to colonial-era Aotearoa New Zealand, it also opens perspectives on the global movement of objects, people, and ideas. Along the way, we can picture the moment when Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific domain, starts to enter the public imagination at opposite ends of the world. From ancient stone carving through to a feast of painted and printed works, the works on display span over four thousand years and take in a range of media.
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Location:
Burdon Family Gallery Monica Richards Gallery -
Curator:
Ken Hall -
Exhibition number:
1137
Collection works in this exhibition
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Commentary
Abandoned Ancestors
Between 1971 and 1978, a selection of twelve early oil portraits came into the collection – a finely painted lineup of mostly British sitters, some named and some unidentified, whose arrival can be seen in a number of different ways.
Artist Profile
Flitting, Gliding, Strutting, Cavorting
Ranking highly among the privately-owned works of art that have fallen across this curator’s path is an exquisite late-Georgian era album of Indian bird watercolours. This significant, previously unpublished folio contains twenty-five delicate watercolours and three small lithographs. Most paintings were produced collaboratively in 1826 by an interesting couple, Elizabeth (Eliza) Jane D’Oyly and her husband Charles Walter D’Oyly, the latter recognised in India as “perhaps the most famous of the amateur British artists who depicted the Indian scene.” A treasured gift from Elizabeth to her sister Isabella Gilbert in 1866, the album has stayed in the same family since then. It also carries sombre themes alongside its splendours.