From the MTG: Director leaves incredible legacy

Interestingly, Rooks and Rain is one of a number of British artworks held in the Hawke's Bay Museums Trust collection. Photo / NZME

Inspired by Arthur Rimbaud's poem The Rooks, Rooks and Rain seems relevant with the last throes of winter causing wild weather such as slips and flooding in the Nelson and Wellington regions.

Rooks and Rain, 1950 is a squally vision by British wood engraver Gertrude Hermes. Hermes was an illustrator at Penguin Books for a time and exhibitor at the British Royal Academy and Venice International Exhibition in the 1930s.

The art of wood engraving had enjoyed a revival among English artists at the turn of the 20th century through to the 1950s. Scenes such as this of birds and animals, infused with a nostalgic or romantic mood, were in keeping with British wood engravers who forged their own style, unique in both design and technique.

Interestingly, Rooks and Rain is one of a number of British artworks held in the Hawke's Bay Museums Trust collection. Many other works by British artists such as Paul Nash and renowned potter Bernard Leach were acquired for the museum in the 1950s.

They were purchased by the brilliant Leonard Bestall, a Napier man who was credited with being the founder of the museum as we know it, due to his fundraising efforts to build the first iteration of MTG Hawke's Bay, Hawke's Bay Museum and Art Gallery - the first museum, which opened on MTG's present site in 1936.

On completion of the building project, Bestall assumed the role of Honorary Director and the rest as they say, is history. Well, not quite. With the outbreak of World War II, Bestall joined the Church Army and was posted as captain to Cairo in May 1942.

Returning at the end of the war in 1944 to Hawke's Bay, Bestall took up his directorial role again and remained director of the museum until his death in 1959.

Before Bestall left for the war however, he had identified art and history as the main collecting areas for the museum. Following this up on his return, he wrote in 1949 "We are doing far too much and should... make up our minds to be art and history." All natural history collecting at the museum ceased from then on.

Bestall acquired Rooks and Rain on a trip he and his wife made to Britain as the director of Hawke's Bay Art Gallery and Museum.

Following a' shot in the arm' private donation and professional scholarship monies he'd been awarded, Bestall again travelled with his wife overseas in 1950 to purchase contemporary British and European work for the museum.

This print by Hermes more than likely resulted from that expedition. A leading wood engraver and British art star at the time, Hermes would have come to the attention of Mary and Leo Bestall on their trip and this astute purchase made.

Hermes' work is also held in many public collections, including the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery in London, and in many private collections, including the collection of the late David Bowie.

Bestall was himself a creative soul. He was an architect, a painter, a photographer and a designer of some note. On her death his wife Mary left an accomplished and elegant collection of his work to the museum on her death, much of which can be seen in MTG online Fine Arts collection.

It was this director's passion for the arts that saw him leave an incredible legacy, not just of his own work, but of those British and European artists who make up a real area of strength in the Hawke's Bay Museum Trust Collection.

This work by Hermes is a fabulous asset to the region so if you need a bit of winter cheer, take a browse through the MTG's online collection. There you can give thanks to Leonard Bestall for his insightful collecting and his own wonderful prints and drawings. And if that doesn't help, well, there are only five more sleeps until spring!

The writer acknowledges Culture of Collecting: 60 Years of the Hawke's Bay Museum, 1996, by Elisabeth Pishief as the primary source of information on Leonard Bestall and Hawke's Bay Museum.

Toni MacKinnon is art curator at MTG.