From the collection: a certain fluidity

The revolutionary publication Women and the Arts in New Zealand – Forty Works: 1936-86 sought to address the notable absence of women and wāhine Māori from the local art history canon in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Published in 1986 by University of Auckland academics Merimeri Penfold (Ngāti Kurī), a senior lecturer in Māori studies, and Elizabeth Eastmond, a lecturer in art history, the book featured 40 artists working across the mid-twentieth century. It celebrated the artists’ contributions to the development of modernism and their mastery of their chosen mediums.

Alongside more familiar names like Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947) and Rita Angus (1908-1970), several women who we know less about were included in the publication.

One such artist was the accomplished watercolourist Gabrielle Hope (1916-1962).  My attention was first drawn to Hope’s paintings when curator Julia Waite enquired about the locations of two of her watercolours held in the University of Auckland Art Collection. Having only seen Mount Tauhara after Fire (1962) in person, I was curious about the earlier Fruit and Flowers (1951). So, one afternoon I made a special trip to Grafton Campus, where I discovered the 70-year-old painting quietly singing from its position amid the contemporary architecture.

I was delighted by the modernity of the work, which showcased a lively interpretation of still life tradition and a seemingly effortless control of watercolour. I soon learned both to be enchanting qualities of Hope’s artistic works. 

Born in Lower Hutt, Hope (née Allan) moved to Auckland where she first heralded an interest in painting at high school. Though she spent some time studying intermittently at Elam School of Fine Arts around 1946 when her youngest child began school, she was largely a self-taught painter.

Adept in watercolour and gouache, in which she produced much of her oeuvre, Hope’s style can be characterised by a certain fluidity that features in her landscapes, still lives and animal studies.

Though her painterly treatment is reminiscent of Frances Hodgkins, Hope often interprets her subjects with a more sparse and gestural hand. Fruit and Flowers demonstrates a quiet confidence in her technique, straying away from a strictly figurative still life to one decidedly more undone. A cascade of foliage and sinuous strokes flow outward from the focal point of the painting and dance across the surface.

The colours are equally expressive, as swathes of cerulean and moss green swirl around a pair of recognisable fern fronds and the central group of golden florals.

Throughout the composition there is an intentional use of blank space and barely-there floral forms, as though they have been sketched quickly as impressions. The extra breathing room makes way for a feeling of movement between the swirling lines, giving focus to the evocative shapes themselves. The effect is calligraphic, undoubtedly inspired by Hope’s noted keen interest in Chinese ink-brush landscape painting.

Less than a decade later, Hope grew to be considered a leading watercolourist and was included in the important exhibition Five New Zealand Watercolourists at Auckland City Art Gallery (1958).

Organised by Colin McCahon, the show brought Hope’s paintings into direct conversation with other artists excelling in the medium (Rita Angus, T. A. McCormack, Olivia Spencer-Bower and Eric Lee-Johnson). Tragically, she passed away suddenly only four years later, at age 46, cutting short her creative exploration and life yet to be lived.

Penfold and Eastmond attribute the small amount of knowledge around Hope’s practice to her extreme modesty about her own work and her reticence to exhibit it – something they acknowledge she held in common with several of her contemporaries, like Flora Scales and May Smith.

Their stories and their major artistic contributions are thankfully being retold with renewed contemporary interest in the often-overlooked lives of women artists throughout history.

Gabrielle Hope’s two paintings in the University of Auckland Art Collection are both on permanent display. Fruit and Flowers is located on the Lower Ground Floor of Building 507, Grafton Campus and Mount Tauhara after Fire is in the Lounge at Old Government House, City Campus.

Madeleine Gifford is the Art Collection Adviser at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland.

See pictures in the University of Auckland Art Collection at artcollection.auckland.ac.nz.