The paintings that Whanganui painter Edith Collier created in England 100 years ago remain to this day, utterly fresh. At that time, there was no one in Aotearoa New Zealand painting with such modernist verve
“I am certain your fate will bring you back to England as mine did,” wrote our most celebrated artist of the period, Frances Hogkins to Collier, after she had returned home in 1921.
Yet, that was not to be. Which may help explain why it’s only in recent decades we have begun recognising Collier as one of the finest of our painters of the first half of the 20th century.
Edith Collier’s career instead contains a series of fascinating ‘whats ifs’, notes writer and biographer Jill Trevelyan.
What if Collier hadn’t had to return to New Zealand from England at the height of her burgeoning powers? What if she hadn’t been so shy of self promotion? So loyal to her family? And what if a conservative New Zealand society hadn’t dismissed her dynamic modernism so quickly, or had the wherewithal to support her?
Read the article on RNZ here.
