Category Archives: Visual Art

Acclaimed as ‘one of the best portrait painters New Zealand has produced.’

As an artist she was extremely self-critical, maintaining the highest standards of professionalism, but she was generous in her help to young artists. Although well regarded as a landscape painter, her major contribution to New Zealand art lies in the way she revitalised formal portraiture in the 1920s and 1930s.

The limitless decorative possibilities in Maud Sherwood’s work – vivid colours dashed onto the paper in broad sweeps, the assured linear qualities either loosely or tightly structured – reflected her own ‘vital and attractive’ personality.

Mary Elizabeth Richardson was one of several successful artists to emerge during the 1890s, a period of creativity in New Zealand art. As M. E. R. Tripe she became a portrait painter of national importance, as well as a teacher and formidable influence on Wellington art for over 30 years.

New Zealand painter