Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Encyclopedia
Dunedin
Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago Region. It is considered to be one of the four main urban centres of New Zealand for historic, cultural, and geographic reasons. Dunedin was the largest city by territorial land area until...
, New Zealand. Located in The Octagon
The Octagon, Dunedin
The Octagon is the city centre of Dunedin, in the South Island of New Zealand.-Features:The Octagon is an eight sided plaza bisected by the city's main street, which is called George Street to the northeast and Princes Street to the southwest...
in the heart of the city, it is close to the city's public library, municipal chambers,(Dunedin Town Hall
Dunedin Town Hall
The Dunedin Town Hall is a municipal building in the city of Dunedin in New Zealand. It is located in the heart of the city extending from The Octagon, the central plaza, to Moray Place through a whole city block. It is the seat of the Dunedin City Council, providing its formal meeting chamber, as...
) and other facilities such as the Regent Theatre
Regent Theatre, Dunedin
The Regent Theatre is a theatre in Dunedin, New Zealand with a seating capacity of about 1,650. It is in The Octagon, the city's central plaza, directly opposite the Municipal Chambers and close to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery....
.
History
The gallery was founded by W.M. Hodgkins in 1884 and was the first public art gallery in New Zealand. It originally occupied what is now the maritime gallery in the Otago MuseumOtago museum
The Otago Museum is situated in Dunedin, New Zealand. It was founded in 1868 and has a collection of over two million artefacts and specimens from the fields of natural history and ethnography...
, was re-located to the Municipal Chambers in the Octagon from 1888–1890, and then to an annexe to the Otago Museum. It moved to a new purpose-designed building in Queen's Gardens in 1907, to which a structure housing the Otago Settlers Museum
Otago Settlers Museum
The Otago Settlers Museum is a regional history museum in Dunedin, New Zealand. Its brief covers the territory of the old Otago Province, that is, New Zealand from the Waitaki River south. It is New Zealand's oldest and most extensive history museum...
was added the following year. In 1927 it was moved to a building constructed for the 1925-6 New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition in Logan Park
Logan Park, Dunedin
Logan Park is a sporting venue in the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. It lies on land reclaimed from the former Lake Logan.- History :Lake Logan was reclaimed in the early 20th century...
, Dunedin North
Dunedin North
Dunedin North, also known as North Dunedin, is a major inner suburb of the New Zealand city of Dunedin, located to the northeast of the city centre. It contains many of the city's major institutions, including the city's university, polytechnic, main hospital, and largest museum...
designed by Edmund Anscombe
Edmund Anscombe
Edmund Anscombe was one of the most important figures to shape the architectural and urban fabric of New Zealand. He was important, not only because of the prolific nature of his practice and the quality of his work, but also because of the range and the scale of his built and speculative projects...
. The building was bought and donated to the city by Sir Percy and Lady Sargood, as a memorial to their son who was killed at Gallipoli
Battle of Gallipoli
The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli, took place at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War...
. The gallery was relocated to its present site, the refitted D.I.C.
D.I.C. (department store)
The D.I.C. was a New Zealand department store chain, founded in Dunedin by Bendix Hallenstein in 1884.It was bought out by one of its chief rivals, Arthur Barnett, in the 1980s...
building, in 1996.
In its long existence the gallery has played host to numerous overseas exhibitions, including Masterpieces of the Guggenheim
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
a 1990s modern art show, and the touring Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
exhibition The Pre-Raphaelite Dream, more recently.
Collection
The gallery has a strong collection of old, modern and contemporary works, by New Zealand and overseas artists. It has one of the most numerous collections of works by Frances HodgkinsFrances Hodgkins
Frances Mary Hodgkins was a painter chiefly of landscape and still life, and for a short period was a designer of textiles. She was born in New Zealand, but spent most of her working life in Britain...
, who was born in the city. It has the most extensive collection of old master paintings in New Zealand and the most significant holdings of paintings by post 1800 overseas artists.
The collections include works by Jacopo del Casentino
Jacopo del Casentino
Jacopo del Casentino was an Italian painter called Jacopo Landino or da Prato Vecchio, active mainly in Tuscany...
(also known as Landini), Zanobi Machiavelli
Zanobi Machiavelli
Zanobi Machiavelli was an Italian painter and illuminator.Machiavelli specialized in religious themed pieces. Some of his works reside at the National Gallery, London , and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. He died in Pisa in 1479.-References:...
, Benvenuto Tisi (called Garofalo), Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, Carlo Maratta
Carlo Maratta
Carlo Maratta or Maratti was an Italian painter, active mostly in Rome, and known principally for his classicizing paintings executed in a Late Baroque Classical manner. Although he is part of the classical tradition stemming from Raphael, he was not exempt from the influence of Baroque painting...
, Luca Giordano
Luca Giordano
Luca Giordano was an Italian late Baroque painter and printmaker in etching. Fluent and decorative, he worked successfully in Naples and Rome, Florence and Venice, before spending a decade in Spain....
, Salvator Rosa
Salvator Rosa
Salvator Rosa was an Italian Baroque painter, poet and printmaker, active in Naples, Rome and Florence. As a painter, he is best known as an "unorthodox and extravagant" and a "perpetual rebel" proto-Romantic.-Early life:...
, Claude Lorraine, Hans Rottenhammer
Hans Rottenhammer
Johann Rottenhammer, or Hans Rottenhammer, was a German painter. He specialized in highly finished paintings on a small scale.-Biography:He was born in Munich, where he studied until 1588 under Hans Donauer the Elder...
, Pieter de Grebber
Pieter de Grebber
Pieter Fransz de Grebber was a Dutch Golden Age painter.-Life:De Grebber was the oldest son of Frans Pietersz de Grebber , a painter and embroiderer in Haarlem, and the brother of the painters Maria and Albert. He learned to paint from his father and from Hendrick Goltzius...
, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Marcus Gheeraerts was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter...
, William Dobson
William Dobson
William Dobson was a portraitist and one of the first notable English painters, praised by his contemporary John Aubrey as "the most excellent painter that England has yet bred"....
, Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen (Cornelius Johnson), Jan Van Goyen, Allan Ramsay, Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...
, Joshua Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...
, George Romney
George Romney (painter)
George Romney was an English portrait painter. He was the most fashionable artist of his day, painting many leading society figures - including his artistic muse, Emma Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson....
, Henry Raeburn
Henry Raeburn
Sir Henry Raeburn was a Scottish portrait painter, the first significant Scottish portraitist since the Act of Union 1707 to remain based in Scotland.-Biography:...
, John Hoppner
John Hoppner
John Hoppner was an English portrait painter, .-Early life:Hoppner was born in Whitechapel, London, the son of German parents - his mother was one of the German attendants at the royal palace. King George's fatherly interest and patronage of the young boy gave rise to rumours, quite unfounded,...
and William Turner
William Turner (artist)
William Turner was an English painter who specialised in watercolour landscapes. He was a contemporary of the more famous artist J. M. W. Turner and his style was not dissimilar. He is often known as William Turner of Oxford or just Turner of Oxford to distinguish him from his better known namesake...
; John Constable
John Constable
John Constable was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection...
, Theodore Rousseau
Théodore Rousseau
Pierre Étienne Théodore Rousseau , French painter of the Barbizon school, was born in Paris, of a bourgeois family.-Youth:At first he received a business training, but soon displayed aptitude for painting...
, Giovanni Fattori
Giovanni Fattori
Giovanni Fattori was an Italian artist, one of the leaders of the group known as the Macchiaioli. He was initially a painter of historical themes and military subjects. In his middle years, inspired by the Barbizon school, he became one of the leading Italian plein-airists, painting landscapes,...
, Silvestro Lega
Silvestro Lega
Silvestro Lega was an Italian realist painter. He was one of the leading artists of the Macchiaioli and was also involved with the Mazzini movement.-Biography:Lega was born in Modigliana, near Forlì, to an affluent family...
, James Tissot
James Tissot
James Jacques Joseph Tissot was a French painter, who spent much of his career in Britain.-Biography:Tissot was born in Nantes, France. In about 1856, he began study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Hippolyte Flandrin and Lamothe, and became friendly with Edgar Degas and James Abbott...
, Johan Jongkind
Johan Jongkind
Johan Barthold Jongkind was a Dutch painter and printmaker regarded as a forerunner of Impressionism who influenced Claude Monet....
, Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
, Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
, George Frederic Watts
George Frederic Watts
George Frederic Watts, OM was a popular English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life...
, Sir Stanley Spencer, Walter Sickert
Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert , born in Munich, Germany, was a painter who was a member of the Camden Town Group in London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the 20th century....
and André Derain
André Derain
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...
.
The gallery's British watercolours, the gift of F.H.D. Smythe, include over 1300 works and the group is outstanding in New Zealand. The gallery has significant holdings of overseas old master and modern prints and drawings, including a notable collection of Japanese woodblock prints. Its New Zealand holdings are distinguished by such works as George O'Brien
George O'Brien (painter)
George O'Brien was an engineer of aristocratic background who turned to art in 19th century Australasia, dying in poverty but leaving a body of remarkable work.-Biography:...
's 'Lawyer's Head from Forbury Head, Sunrise', Petrus Van der Velden
Petrus Van der Velden
Petrus van der Velden , who is also known as Paulus van der Velden was a New Zealand artist of Dutch descent. Van der Velden was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and died in Auckland, New Zealand, 11 Nov 1913...
's 'A Waterfall in the Otira Gorge', G.P. Nerli's 'Portrait of a Girl', C.F. Goldie's 'All 'e Same t'e Pakeha', Alfred Henry O'Keeffe
Alfred Henry O'Keeffe
Alfred Henry O'Keeffe , was a notable New Zealand artist and art teacher, who spent the majority of his life in Dunedin. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, he was one of the few New Zealand artists to engage with new ideas while staying in New Zealand. At this time most adventurous...
's 'The Defence Minister's Telegram', Rita Angus
Rita Angus
Rita Angus was a New Zealand painter born in Hastings. Along with Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston, she is credited as one of the leading figures in twentieth century New Zealand art...
's 1937 'Self Portrait', Colin McCahon
Colin McCahon
Colin John McCahon was a prominent New Zealand artist. During his life he also worked in art galleries and as a university lecturer...
's 'The 5 Wounds of Christ' and Ralph Hotere
Ralph Hotere
Hone Papita Raukura "Ralph" Hotere is a New Zealand artist of Māori descent . He was born in Mitimiti, Northland and He is widely regarded as one of New Zealand's most important living artists...
's 'Rosemary'.
Unlike New Zealand's other major public galleries the Dunedin Public Art Gallery branched out into the decorative arts in the 1920s, developing on the model of the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
in London, or the American 'Art Museums'. It thus has extensive and, in New Zealand, unparalleled holdings of ceramics, glassware, metalwork, furniture and textiles, mostly of overseas origin. The William De Morgan
William De Morgan
William Frend De Morgan was an English potter and tile designer. A lifelong friend of William Morris, he designed tiles, stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co. from 1863 to 1872. His tiles are often based on medieval designs or Persian patterns, and he experimented with innovative glazes and...
Dragon Charger is an example.
The gallery is open daily (except public holidays) from 10am to 5pm.