Sarjeant happenings: The dancer and the painter

The ‘Portrait of a Dancer - Miss Margaret Scrimshaw’ 1958, oil on hardboard. Collection of the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui. Purchased with funds from Margaret Duncan's bequest, 1958. Photo / Explore the Collection, Sarjeant Gallery

When the Sarjeant Gallery mounted an exhibition of 40 works by New Zealand artist Ida Carey on the theme of theatre and ballet, a portrait of Margaret Scrimshaw, one of New Zealand’s most celebrated ballerinas was included. That same year the Gallery acquired the painting thanks to a bequest and it joined three other works by Carey in the Sarjeant collection.

Sixty-five years later in April this year, the obituary of Margaret Pellow nee Scrimshaw (1924-2023) appeared in the Waikato Times accompanied by Carey’s portrait of the dancer in her London heyday.

Born in Temuka, both Margaret Scrimshaw and her sister Norma were educated in the arts with Scrimshaw soon discovering a passion for ballet. She trained tirelessly, succeeding in competitions and examinations as well as winning many awards.

Aged 18 she opened the Margaret Scrimshaw School of Dance in Hamilton, assisted financially by her father, and proved to be as good a teacher as she was a performer. Reviews in newspapers were glowing with an Auckland newspaper saying, “the adorable premier danseuse, Margaret Scrimshaw, should be praised in verse rather than prose” and the Waikato Times at the time calling her “one of the Dominion’s leading ballerinas”.

The obituary vividly recounts a thrilling professional career when, after the war, Scrimshaw took her performing and teaching career to London where she danced in many ballets and worked as ballet mistress at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. She danced alongside Margot Fonteyn and fellow New Zealand ballerina Rowena Jackson and counted them both as friends.

“It was a measure of Margaret’s international achievements that her portrait was painted in 1958, likely from a photograph, by the renowned Hamilton artist Ida Carey,” Richard Swainson wrote in the Waikato Times.

By all accounts, Margaret Pellow was a vibrant character and in her 90s she reportedly continued to astonish the locals of Hamilton with her balletic prowess.

“At traffic lights, Margaret had a distinctive technique. She would gracefully lift her leg to the level of the crossing button and with considerable elegance, gently press… Few if any guessed that Margaret was once one of New Zealand’s most celebrated ballerinas, the toast of London, who had danced with Margot Fonteyn,” writes Swainson.

The painter, Ida Carey (1891-1982), was born in Taonui near Feilding. She studied painting in Sydney under Italian Cavalier Dattilo Rubbo and her work was well-reviewed.

Carey is perhaps best remembered for her hundred-plus paintings of Māori women with moko, a project she embarked on after a motor accident in 1963.

One of the first works “Amohia Tuhua” was a joint winner of the 1968 Kelliher Award for portraiture.

Sarjeant Gallery Curator of Collections, Jennifer Taylor Moore, said how pleased they were to see the Waikato Times piece, which gave a full account of Margaret Scrimshaw’s background and accomplishments, and to see Carey’s portrait.

On the back of the portrait, Carey had thoughtfully included some information about her subject – noting that she was “Ballet Mistress, Drury Lane Theatre London, had completed all the Royal Academy examinations, including Solo Seal, under Miss B. Edwards of Nettleton-Edwards School in Auckland and the names of various maestros and teachers she had studied under in England and Paris. She also “danced at the Coliseum Theatre with a Royal Command Performance and at the Drury Lane Theatre where she was Ballet Mistress”.

The painting was bought along with “Gethsemane” by Lois White with money from the Margaret Duncan bequest.

“Sometimes people do leave the Sarjeant Gallery bequests in their will and we don’t find out about it until the will is administered. People are incredibly generous and forethoughtful so when we purchase an artwork we put their name on the credit line and whenever an artwork is published as in this case, there is always an acknowledgement made.”

The work can be viewed on the Sarjeant Gallery’s online collection portal Explore the Collection