Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist
by Jill Trevelyan, Jennifer Taylor and Greg Donson

The ‘Almost Legendary Wanganui Artist’. That description, by the then-director of the National Art Gallery Stewart MacLennan, was made in a 1956 review of one of Edith Collier’s rare forays into the realm of the more usual spaces in which we encounter art: a touring exhibition.

From the early 1920s, on her return to Aotearoa after nearly a decade in Europe, until her passing in 1964 Collier was a diffident painter and exhibitor, rarely doing much of either. Her work was seen in passing, discussed by other artists intermittently, or pointed to occasionally by art-world insiders such as Charles Brasch, who tracked Collier down in 1960 to persuade her to be the subject of a feature in Landfall magazine.

Edith Collier in her studio at 5 Leinster Square, London, c. 1921.

Collier was either reticent of or indifferent to the more usual path of the hustling artist searching for an audience and – for the anointed few – acclaim. Perhaps she was timid, shy or even afraid to fully commit to the life of the artist as framed in 1921 by her teacher and mentor Frances Hodgkins: ‘… don’t mind the buffets or knocks. They are inseparable from the artist’s life. It’s an uphill struggle all the way & it’s only the stout hearted who win through.’

The Pouting Girl, 1920. Watercolour on paper, 320 × 325 mm. Artwork copyright © Edith Collier. All works are in the collection of the Edith Collier Trust, in the permanent care of the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui.

The artist that emerges in this affecting account may not have been sufficiently ‘stout hearted’ to engage with the rough and tumble of the art game, but that does not mean she wasn’t an artist of talent and, at times, searching observation. Her work is leavened with a quiet introspection. In particular, the best of her portraits such as The Pouting Girl (1920) or Girl in Sunshine (1915) reveal that Collier made good on her pact to explore the conceptual building blocks European modernism in the early 20^th century. Figurative artists were responding to the challenge of the newly minted abstraction as articulated by the French painter Maurice Denis: ‘Remember that a picture – before it becomes a battle-horse, a nude woman or any sort of anecdote – is essentially a flat surface covered by colours arranged in a certain order.’

Girl in the Sunshine, 1915. Oil on canvas, 730 × 604 mm. Artwork copyright © Edith Collier. All works are in the collection of the Edith Collier Trust, in the permanent care of the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui.

And so modernism became an exciting space in the early 20^th century as short, sharp ‘movements’ interpolated into this contest between the near heresy of abstraction and traditional representation. In bursts, after 1900, along came Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism and Surrealism. In the U.K., where Collier spent her formative artistic training between 1913 and 1921, these impulsive trends powered a fast-paced and exciting milieu which clearly coaxed her out of her shell.  Much of Collier’s work at this time is a kind of artistic karaoke of stylistic experimentation but when she found her own voice she produced works of arresting originality. The Lady of Kent (1917–18) is one such example, demonstrating Collier’s affinity with the nude; not erotic, not coy – unaffected.

A century later the politics of body imagery and stereotypes of gender allow for a more fulsome exploration of the female nude freed from the male gaze. This ‘sinewy’ or ‘flat-chested’ model, to quote writers Joanne Drayton and Julia Waite respectively, is depicted by Collier in a series of works that hint at her facility with the nude as a device to convey an arcadian or allegorical narrative around man’s ‘fallen’ state, just as it informed some of the best work of Matisse and Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler at this time. But, as Jill Trevelyan elegantly elucidates in the book’s lead essay, this is one of many moments where the artist appears to be heading in a promising direction, only for this artistic beachhead to be revealed as not a beginning but an end: Collier’s ‘reluctance to sell her work or promote herself as an artist means she has been largely overlooked in the conversation around the development of modernism in New Zealand.’

In the first half of the 20^th century much of this discourse was driven by women such as Collier’s teacher Frances Hodgkins, as well as Rhona Hazard, Rita Angus, A. Lois White and Louise Henderson. Of this pioneering cohort Collier is the least well-known. This publication and the upcoming re-opening exhibition at Te Whare o Rehua the Sarjeant Gallery, which holds the vast bulk of Collier’s life’s work, will go some way towards rectifying her absence from the larger narrative of early modernism in Aotearoa.

The Lady of Kent, 1917–18. Oil on canvas, 719 × 591 mm. Artwork copyright © Edith Collier. All works are in the collection of the Edith Collier Trust, in the permanent care of the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui.

Moments of artistic clarity such as The Lady of Kent or the cycle of works created in the Irish fishing town of Bonmahon in 1915 provide this account a great pathos: a perhaps not overly confident talent reaches fruition and then withdraws into the more nourishing and safe space of family and duty.

For it is as much the account of Collier as a vital part of a large and loving family that I responded to as much as her manifest talent as a painter. Her artistic journey was interrupted by World War I, and like so many expatriate New Zealanders, London-based Collier devoted herself to supporting a moving cast of brothers, cousins and family friends serving in the New Zealand Division. At ‘one stage there were five men, covered in their greatcoats, sleeping on her floor.’

Born in 1885, Edith was the oldest of a large family of ten children. Her family was well-to-do, running a business importing musical instruments and living on a sprawling farm outside of Whanganui. The Collier family was musically inclined and encouraged Edith on her artistic journey. She travelled to England in 1913 to study, carrying the high hopes of her family with her. ‘Perhaps one day,’ her brother Frank suggested, she would paint ‘some famous pictures which will be a credit to the Collier family.’

After the war her family was unable to continue supporting her and Collier returned to Whanganui and settled into a rich and busy family life. Over time she had 37 nephews and nieces, and she was devoted to caring for many of these as well as nursing ageing parents and relatives.  Her family has nurtured Collier’s legacy and cared for her wider body of works via the Edith Collier Trust Collection, housed at the Sarjeant Gallery.

Edith Collier with her nieces and nephews at Ringley, around 1930.

Collier’s output subsequent to her return to Aotearoa until her passing in 1964 is limited and – apart from a fascinating sojourn amongst Ngāti Hikairo at Kāwhia – her works were intermittent and rarely seen outside her family circle.

Now after a century of relative obscurity we can join the dots of her artistic journey as well as her points of connection with a number of leading women artists of the period like Hodgkins and the flamboyant Australian artist Margaret Preston who, after a similar period as a student in Europe, flourished as an artist on her return to Australia.

Jill Trevelyan’s articulation of Collier’s character as ‘modest and publicity-shy’ and realistic about her chances of forging a successful career as a full-time artist either in London or provincial New Zealand after the first World War will, I am sure, resonate with many whose family history contains a not quite realised talent:

We might ask why Edith remained in Whanganui instead of moving to a more progressive city, but that was never really a possibility. Her bond with her family was too strong. While she had enjoyed her time in Britain and the creative stimulation it provided, her life there could be austere and solitary. In Whanganui there was real compensation in being loved and needed.

The regional galleries of Aotearoa contain the life’s work of similar dedicated artists – not world famous in New Zealand but highly esteemed nonetheless. Margot Phillips’ elegiac landscapes fill the racks of the Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato. Down the road in Rotorua the Museum houses over 200 organic Surrealist works by the Dutch émigré artist William Bakkenes.

Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist contains illustrations of a significant proportion of the artist’s oeuvre as well as essays from contributors including curator Auckland Art Gallery curator Julia Waite, artist Gretchen Albrecht, Te Papa curator Lizzie Bisley, historian Scott Flutey, curator and author Gregory O’Brien and well-known writers and curators in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia – over 20 in total. She has quite a fan club, whose number will surely increase with the wider exposure of this volume and the soon-to-open exhibition in Whanganui.