Maurice Bartlett points to possibly the near-hidden sign-off of sketch artist and former Lands and Survey draughtsman and workmate Gordon Redward. Photo / Warren Buckland
Maurice Bartlett points to possibly the near-hidden sign-off of sketch artist and former Lands and Survey draughtsman and workmate Gordon Redward. Photo / Warren Buckland
The wide search to establish the identity of a sketch artist who produced a cartoon of a Hastings hospital ward scene in 1961 has taken another turn – a mission to find any living family.
Paraparaumu woman Lynn Evans, who started the hunt for the person behind the sketch offather Bill Kyle as a patient amid the chaos of Ward 9 at Hawke's Bay Hospital, still wants to be able to give the framed cartoon back to family, or if not, at least see that is somehow archived in a place with historical significance - a museum, gallery, or the hospital.
The big clues to the identity of the artist are in two threepenny postage stamps fixed within the sketch, in frames drawn for the purpose, and the delivery address of Bill Kyle - "WD.9 MEMORIAL HOSP. HASTINGS." - sketched on a pretend envelope on a low table at the foot of Kyle's bed.
The hospital ward sketch with the postage stamps and mailing address, characteristics of the work of artist Gordon Redward. Photo / Supplied
They were trademarks of late Napier Lands and Survey Department draughtsman Gordon Redward, says fellow former Lands and Survey draughtsman Maurice Bartlett, now retired in Napier.
It's highly likely the artist was Redward, with whom Bartlett worked for many years and by whom he was taught.
Most telling was Redward's inscribing of delivery addresses and use of postage stamps affixed to the artwork for delivery by the Post Office, used on such items as cards and other sketchwork if it needed to be delivered.
Hamilton woman and former nurse Liz Horn (nee Hasselman) was also sure it was the work of Redward, a family friend, who had over the years sent cards referring to herself as "Matron". "Which of course I never was," she says.
But readers had a range of other suggestions, almost all of which would have been strong candidates, but for the input of Bartlett and Horn.
The hospital scene sketched by 'Snowy', one of several cartoonists thought by readers to be linked to the sketch of patient Bill Kyle and the 1961 Ward 9 scene of 1961. Photo / Supplied
Among others were known New Zealand sketch artists John McNamara and David Henshaw, Hastings man CB Wilkinson, a cartoonist who signed off just as 'Snowy', and Geoffrey Francis Fuller, who taught art in Hastings high schools and who was the artist behind the threepenny stamp, and other postage stamps produced in 1958.
Redward didn't always sign his work, but sometimes had another characteristic, in hiding or by working-in his initials, GR.
The most commonly-seen examples of the work in his day job were often also unsigned, being maps of Napier and topographical maps of the region.
Bartlett also holds a Redward-traced version of Ahuriri early times, with historical pre-European place names added as he became aware of them, to the extent that the tracing appears to have been at times passed off as the original, although, as Bartlett says, that was never his intention.
Sketches and maps were far from the only string to his bow. He was also a more than useful pianist who played in the Harry Brown Band and the Moteo Band in gigs around Hawke's Bay, workmate Maurice Bartlett also being part of the music as drummer for several years.
Their families also became close, and in 1970 Redward's son was part of a group Bartlett went to Expo '70 with, in Osaka, Japan.
It is thought, but not known, that Redward had been briefly a fellow patient of Kyle, and taught him a bit of the skill (signified by what Evans calls the "paint-by-numbers" birds also sketched in frames).
Being draughtsman and carpenter they had possibly found something in common, and it is thought that Redward would have done the sketch in the following days and sent it to the ward to cheer Kyle up.
Hawke's Bay Today had by Thursday afternoon been unable to trace any family of Redward, with Evans still holding out hope of getting the sketch back to them.
