Rata Alice Lovell-Smith
Rata and Colin Lovell-Smith were leading artists of the Canterbury School, a regionalist movement which expressed a growing awareness of a local identity and harboured aspirations for a distinctive New Zealand art.
Rata and Colin Lovell-Smith were leading artists of the Canterbury School, a regionalist movement which expressed a growing awareness of a local identity and harboured aspirations for a distinctive New Zealand art.
Although ‘Gods’ featured in the 1940 National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art in Wellington, and other work is held in public and numerous private collections, her contribution to Canterbury art was not recognised until she was included in the 1993 exhibition, White Camellias.
Although it is for her Māori portraits that she is best known, critics have generally claimed that Ida Carey’s finest work was done in the 1920s and 1930s, and that much of her later work contains technical deficiencies, especially in her use of colour. This perhaps explains why she has been ignored in New Zealand art history literature. However, her significance both as an artist with great popular appeal and as a major contributor to the development of fine arts in Waikato cannot be denied.
As a working artist, Elizabeth Wallwork established a career in portraiture mainly for private clients. She was described as one of the foremost exponents of pastel portraiture in New Zealand. She also painted in oil: miniatures and portraits of women, children and, as her reputation grew, many prominent Christchurch people. She painted and exhibited landscapes, and in later life submitted impressionistic flower paintings to the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1966 the first retrospective exhibition of Lusk’s work took place at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, and was well received. Half of the paintings on display were owned by public institutions, the most prominent of which were the Auckland City Art Gallery and the Hocken Library. The same year Lusk was appointed tutor in drawing at the University of Canterbury. As a teacher she encouraged and supported a subsequent generation of New Zealand artists.
Perhaps best remembered for her portrait paintings, Copeland had a particular interest in Māori subjects. In 1937 the Auckland Star art critic described her study of a girl, ‘Rita Hikiora’, as ‘one of the few portrait studies worthy of attention’ at the time. Another well-known work, ‘Marie’, was a delicate and sentimental portrait of a young Māori girl, who ‘looks tremulously out on life’.
By 1912 Sarah Heap was regarded as New Zealand’s leading authority on the physical training of girls.
Sophie Willock Bryant was an Irish mathematician who also published on many other topics: Irish history, religion, education, women’s rights, and philosophy.
Gloria Hewitt is an American mathematician who undertook research in algebra. She became the first African American woman to chair a university mathematics department in the United States.
Helen Benson founded the New Zealand branch of the Federation of University Women, becoming its first president.She lectured on international affairs for many years, and took a practical interest in the plight of refugees who came to New Zealand in the 1930s. She was a member of the Senate of the University of New Zealand from 1939 to 1948. She was also closely involved with the National Council of Women of New Zealand. In 1933 she strongly supported the adoption of a motion that criticised the lack of financial relief for unemployed women and in 1937 was partly responsible for the council’s taking a sympathetic attitude towards abortion in some circumstances.