Seven decades of Tosswill Woollaston’s work on show
The late Sir Tosswill Woollaston was like Mr Valiant-for-truth in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. He forsook ordinary life and struggled to go his own way. Woollaston, whose paintings are on show at the Pah Homestead, had his own concept of truth in painting and pursued it steadfastly through his long lifeas a painter.
When young he had an off-and-on relationship with conventional representation but soon struck off in a new direction and spent many years without much recognition or recompense, living hard and bringing up a family. He continued painting in the manner he evolved until, finally, he achieved a secure place in our art history.
His progress can be followed in this exhibition that contains work spanning the seven decades of his career. What most moved the painter were the hills near where he lived in Taranaki, Nelson and Greymouth. The end of his search for his vision of truth can be seen in the foyer, showing one of the large panoramic paintings that were his finest achievement.
In the adjacent Morning Room is one of his first works, The Head of the Huinga Valley, in Taranaki (1993), where he grew up. It is a good, conventional landscape catching the rhythm of the distant hills and the underlying brown and green of the pasture.
In the same room is Mapua (1934), a stronger piece with the high viewpoint that became characteristic of his work. It commands a wide bay and steep hills which also became a frequent motif. It is an awkward painting where detail such as a pair of cranes in the port cannot be fitted into the rough attack.
When Woollaston learned to sweep aside detail and drive with his brushwork to express the strength of his emotional commitment to the ruggedness of hills, the paintings became more powerful.
"Painting is another word for feeling," said the great landscape painter John Constable and Woollaston echoed his words when he wrote that his desire was "to harvest the rich emotions that come to me from landscape".
He was enraged by anyone who dismissed "Modern Art", and wanted tidy views with careful line and shading. He would go his own way, defining forms only in colour. This was revolutionary in the New Zealand of the 1930s when Cezanne was a name known only to a few. He and his friend and supporter, Colin McCahon, were involved in a battle against conservatism. The progress he made can be measured by the paintings in the other main rooms.
He evolved his own range of colours of earthy browns and blue and green skies. Particularly impressive are Lyttelton Harbour (1970) that establishes the space of the harbour reaching toward the horizon, and the moody Pah Hill with Half Moon (1992).
But the foyer contains the greatest riches. Tasman Bay (1986) is one of the wide panoramas the painter made when he took courage and expanded the size of his work to match his vision and style. It contains Taramakau (1962) with its intensity of brushwork and Window on Greymouth (1959), a softer inventive work that does not give away the directness of his approach.
All his life Woollaston worked at figures and portraits. Here his painting decisions are more questionable. The nature of his search for the truth of a character is apparent in the Long Room, that is entirely given over to his drawings of one model, a Maori boy, known as Erua. He made more than 80 drawings, all done with precipitous force but only occasionally catching what he sought, though the struggle is impressive.
This exhibition drawn entirely from the Wallace Arts Trust Collection will travel widely throughout the country and share its comprehensive insights into the nature of the achievement of our first knighted painter.
Skinbloom by Andrea du Chatenier.
At Seed Gallery, Andrea du Chatenier is showing her ceramic heads and figures, which are a mixture of solemnity and caricature. A man-like creature spouts rhinoceros horns. A beautiful woman is crowned with roses but is also prickly with thorns all over her face and neck.
The artist's imaginative vision extends to two large standing figures in fur coats. These priestly figures have well-modelled hands and intricate beards. Beards also adorn a series of small ceramics of prophets whose whole stability rests on their impressive facial hair.
These images are highly individual and done with considerable skill in ornamentation and glazing.
At the galleries
What: Woollaston: Wallace Arts Trust Collection 1931-1996 Where and when: Pah Homestead, 72 Hillsborough Rd, Hillsborough, to September 6 TJ says: The large collection of paintings by the late Sir Tosswill Woollaston covers his whole career and gives insight into the achievements of this groundbreaking modern artist.
What: Creatures of the Future Past by Andrea du Chatenier Where and when: Seed Gallery, 23a Crowhurst St, Newmarket, to August 1 TJ says: An array of strange, theatrical personalities imaginatively created with considerable flair in glazed ceramic.
