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Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Solebay, fought between the English and the Dutch in 1672.

If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it

Gerrit Dou's The Physician is a favourite work in our collection:

The Gallery library has received a new book about the art collection of Empress Eugénie, wife of Emperor Napoléon III.

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.

When the Artzheimers group visits Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetū the members are are stimulated, not just by the paintings on the wall, but also by the caring presentations they hear from curators and guides.

This article first appeared as 'The Muse' in The Press on 25 August 2015.

This article first appeared as 'Allegory of life's beauty, brevity and fragility' in The Press on 15 August 2014.

The answer to yesterday's puzzle is Teresina by Frederick Leighton

This article first appeared as 'Dutch treat' in The Press on 12 April 2013.

Blair Jackson and I attended the opening of Angels & Aristocrats at Dunedin Public Art Gallery on Friday 27 April. It's spectacular.

It's hard to believe, but only eighteen collection works were damaged as a result of all earthquakes, with fourteen damaged on the 22 February 2011.

This article first appeared in The Press on 28 February 2007

Belgian Refugees is one of the first oil paintings that Frances Hodgkins ever exhibited, although at the time she was already well accustomed to showing her watercolours. Working in oils and tempera on canvas, she used an experimental technique in this work that gained much from her experience with watercolour. Believed to have been first shown as Unshatterable, in October 1916 at the International Society's Autumn Exhibition in London, the choice of title would suggest a greater sense of resilience than is actually conveyed by this family group. Here only the baby is oblivious to trouble, while his nursing mother seems devoid of expression, and the older children tense with anxiety or fear. Behind the group, a gap in the swirling grey suggests the fact of a missing father, and this steam and smoke speaks of displacement, the atmospheric backdrop of a train station or the symbolic clouds of war. Within the wall of monochrome, intense colour is reserved for mother and child, who also remind of one of Hodgkins' favourite early choices of subject matter in watercolour.