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

New Zealand painter with an extraordinary zest and independence of spirit, whose lifetime’s response to human character and very individual use of rich colour communicates her vivid reverence and joyful celebration of life.