Collection Articles - Drawing
The Drawing Collection
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Coral & Alan as Canterbury Madonna. 1970. Collection
of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. Gifted to the Gallery
by Alan Pearson, 2000.
2000/149
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Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu's Drawing Collection significantly
expanded in the late 1970s, when a conscious effort was made to
purchase works on paper from the varied disciplines of drawing.
Prior to this, drawings came into the Gallery Collection via gifts
or bequests, such as three illustrations by British/French artist
George Du Maurier, gifted in 1934 by the Trustees of the artist.
Du Maurier (Grandfather of novelist Daphne Du Maurier), was born
in Paris in 1834 and studied art in France and Germany before moving
to London where he established himself as an illustrator and novelist.
In 1864 he joined the staff of Punch, where he became known as a
gentle satirist of middle and upper-class society. Punch, a weekly
publication of humour, quickly developed a reputation as a "defender
of the oppressed and a radical scourge of all authority". Early
targets of the magazine included the monarchy, leading politicians
of the day and the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic movement. Many of Du
Maurier's illustrations of socio- political satire that poked fun
at aristocratic pretentiousness, as portrayed in A Timely Warning,
were executed in pen and ink and revealed much about the artist's
observations of Victorian issues of the time.
The earliest drawings depicting Canterbury in the Collection are
by the British artists William Holmes (1825 - 1885) and Edmund Norman
(1820 - 1875). Holmes' pencil and ink images of Akaroa and Lyttelton
were drawn in 1852 and were purchased in 1987 with assistance from
the Olive Stirrat Bequest. Holmes, a schoolmaster, arrived in Lyttelton
in 1851 and quickly produced many sketches of the region, some of
which were issued as single line engravings printed in London. Norman,
originally a surveyor, was a skilled draughtsman who later settled
in Canterbury. He taught art and several of his drawings of the
region were engraved or lithographed and illustrated publications
such as New Zealand or Zealandia - The Britain of the South.
A number of Christchurch artists and Trusts began to gift work
in support of the Gallery in the 1970s. A significant collection
of Petrus van der Velden drawings, primarily from sketch books depicting
portraits and atmospheric studies of Canterbury and Holland, were
gifted in 1969 by the family of Archibald Nicoll. A large series
of pen and ink, wash and pencil illustrations for the Listener by
Russell Clark were presented in 1975 by Rosalie Archer, the artist's
widow. William Sutton regularly gifted works by his own hand and
other artists to the Gallery. His first gift, in 1978, comprised
a collection of preparatory drawings made for his now-destroyed
painting Homage to Frances Hodgkins. One of these drawings, Compositional
Study for Homage to Frances Hodgkins, depicts a study drawn from
life of the artist Olivia Spencer Bower.
Drawings such as this offer an 'inside' perspective of the creative
process, for they record the way in which ideas are conceived and
developed. Philip Trusttum's Millennium Tapestry Drawing (2000)
is a 'finished' work in felt pen and pencil, yet it also serves
as a notational device for his larger design the Millennium Tapestry installed in the Christchurch Town Hall. Drawings initiate, refine
and extend the artist's repertoire of ideas. However, a dislocation
of drawing from art historical canons rendered the discipline as
subservient to the 'nobler' pursuits of painting and sculpture.
Michael Dell's Spoerri's Table (1993), though, upholds the tradition
of drawing. A bird's eye view of a table top with everyday objects
such as cutlery, plates, ashtrays and cigarettes are rendered in
charcoal with great control.
Olivia Spencer Bower. W.A. Sutton.
Pencil. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. Gift
of the Artist, 1978. |
Dell has taken his inspiration from the Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri
(b. 1930) who was a member of the Nouveau Realisme movement founded
in 1960. This group of artists rejected the free abstraction of
the period in order to make use of existing objects, particularly
found material from the urban environment. Spoerri's Table won the
inaugural 1993 Cranleigh Barton Drawing Award, a biennial competition
jointly presented by the Gallery and the Canterbury Museum and made
possible through the bequest of Cranleigh Harper Barton (1890 -
1975), a well known Canterbury painter and Sumner identity. In 2000
the artist Alan Pearson gifted a significant collection of drawings
to the Gallery, including Canterbury Madonna, an ink drawing on
paper.
A panorama of styles from minimalism to neo expressionism characterise
drawing in the last decades of the 20th century and drawing has
since been relocated within mixed media practices. New Zealand artists
such as Pauline Rhodes and Andrew Drummond have tested the limits
of the medium through a transformative use of materials. Flux (1995),
Rhodes' ink drawing on rusted paper for instance, conveys a process
whereby paper has been stained over time with rusted metal. Rhodes'
has added a white ink wash, augmenting an evolving sense of movement
suggested by the 'contamination' of the paper. Imperfect Atmosphere
No. 9 (1995) a 'drawing' that combines schlagmetal and a chemical
reaction on paper by sculptor Andrew Drummond, is an extension of
a larger sculptural vision. For Beating and Breathing (1995), a
major commission for Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, provocatively
alludes to the close integration of technology and the body. Imperfect
Atmospheres, part of this installation, are 'breaths' - experiments
that record a moment of beauty and perfection isolated in their
own environment. The gallery's extensive collection of graphic works,
representing a myriad of stylistic developments, are testimony to
the fact that drawings have always been, and remain the life force
of the artist.
Jennifer Hay
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