Sarjeant Happenings: New Edith Collier book launch for Whanganui’s Sarjeant Gallery reopening

Art historian and author Jill Trevelyan (left) and Sarjeant Gallery curator of collections Jennifer Taylor are collaborating on the Edith Collier book project.

A fascinating, richly illustrated new book about renowned Whanganui artist Edith Collier is well on the way to completion.

The book launch will coincide with a significant exhibition of Edith Collier’s work as part of the reopening of the Sarjeant Gallery next year. The exhibition will go on tour and has already attracted interest from a number of galleries.

Curator of collections Jennifer Taylor Moore is project managing the book in close collaboration with art historian and author Jill Trevelyn and the Sarjeant’s curator and public programmes manager Greg Donson.

The impetus for the book came from the Edith Collier Trust, which is funding the publication, and Trevelyn began work on the project in 2019. Her work includes writing, editing and research using the Sarjeant Gallery’s extensive collection of Collier’s works, archives, ephemera and library that the gallery holds on behalf of the trust.

Other writers, such as Dr Joanne Drayton who wrote the biography Edith Collier: Her Life and Work 1885-1964, have contributed essays about the artist and her work. Whanganui poet Airini Beautrais has written a poem about Collier’s painting The Bathers and former Tylee Cottage artists in residence who have engaged with Collier’s work in the Sarjeant’s collection have also participated.

Trevelyn says this will be the first significant book since Drayton’s book was published in 1989.

“We have new stories to tell because a lot has happened over the last 20 years in terms of Edith’s work connections with Ireland. But I think, for me, the most exciting thing is that we have had the descendants of some of the portraits of Māori kuia writing about their ancestors for the book. That’s a first, and it adds a whole new perspective to what we know about Edith and her work.”

Taylor Moore has maintained relationships with descendants of the kuia whom Collier painted in Kawhia when she spent around six months there in 1928. This was the most prolific period of her artwork in New Zealand following her return from Europe early in 1922.

“[The descendants] have come to us over the years, shared some stories and visited the paintings as well. So we already have a relationship with some of them and were able to approach them and ask if they would like to contribute to the book. I also think this new book will show the impact of Edith on subsequent generations of artists,” Taylor Moore said.

Other connections have come to light about Collier’s time in Bunmahon, Ireland, in 1914 and 1915. In 2015, the 100th anniversary of Collier’s residence in Bunmahon, there was an exhibition of reproductions of her work.

“Because of that, we’ve now got stories about the people that Edith painted, including her portrait Girl in the Sunshine,” Trevelyn said.

The “girl’s” son, Jim Cullen, whom Drayton had met, remembered his mother wondering all her life what became of the artist and the portrait.

“Through Joanne’s contacts there, they were able to rediscover Edith, and Jim was able to find out that the painting was safe and sound on the other side of the world in a public collection.”

Trevelyn has always loved Collier’s work and sees her as a remarkably strong and enterprising woman who had the rare opportunity to develop her gift overseas, unimpeded by financial concerns or other responsibilities.

“I see her as an amazing woman - to paint all these paintings, to travel to the other side of the world and spend nine years of living pretty much on your own, developing your art and dealing with bombs falling in London was no mean feat. While she was overseas she was able to devote all her time and energy to her art, so she had that complete freedom, which must have been so intoxicating.

“What we see with her work is this amazing outpouring of wonderful work in a very rapid development as an artist. So she produces these very bold, modern paintings and some wonderful portraits. When she comes back to New Zealand, she becomes other things.”

Collier’s numerous nephews and nieces adored their devoted aunt and, Trevelyan says, they still speak about her with much love. Collier painted less on her return home but continued doing so up until the 1940s.

“I think one of her strengths is as a portrait painter. Her portraits have such empathy and sensitivity and a great sense of characterisation, of appreciation of the people that she painted. Some of her paintings are very modernist. They would have looked astonishing to New Zealanders of her time.”