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Edith Collier: Her Life and Work (1885-1964)

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Edith Collier: Her Life and Work (1885-1964) Joanne Drayton A thesis submitted to the University of Canterbury for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History University of Canterbury 1998 Volume I Suzanne Vincent Marshall ii ABSTRACT Edith Collier (1885-1964) is a Wanganui artists whose life and oeuvre is the subject of this biographical essay and catalogue raisonne. She was educated in Wanganui, and at the age of twenty-seven years travelled to Britain and remained there almost a decade from 1913-1921, studying and producing art. She enrolled at London's St. John's Wood Art School and toured extensively executing work in Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Kent, Oxford, Bibury, and Bonmahon in Southern Ireland. Margaret Macpherson and Frances Hodgkins were her most significant teachers, and their ideas and the art that she was exposed to in Britain inspired the artist to work in an increasingly modern manner. Edith Collier returned to New Zealand in the early 1920s with work that reflected the more radical innovations of British modernism, and she was publicly criticised and personally vandalised because of it. Though she worked and exhibited with some determination after her return, from the early 1940s she ceased to paint. The neglect of Edith Collier's career has been canonised in the writings of subsequent art historians, whose theoretical perspective either did not allow an acknowledgment of her achievement, or whose perception of her as a tragic figure did not let them see it. Edith Collier's contribution to New Zealand art history demands re-evaluation because of her unique place as an early modernist, and in light of the impact of modernism in New Zealand in the 1920s, and particularly in provincial Wanganui. Edith Collier's significance must be re­ written in the literature of New Zealand art history, and central to a re-assessment of her achievement is a better understanding of the complex relationship in her biography between the discrimination of sexism and the impact of cultural-lag on the introduction of modern art to New Zealand. Contents Volume 1 Abstract ii Acknow ledgments 1 Introduction 4 Chapter ONE Early Years in New Zealand: 1885-1912 17 Chapter TWO Art Student in London: 1912-1914 32 Chapter THREE Art and War: 1914-1915 51 Chapter FOLIR Macpherson and Collier 1915-1917 64 Chapter FIVE Ideas, Innovation and Armistice: 1917-1919 80 Chapter SIX Hodgldns and Collier: 1919-1920 92 Chapter SEVEN Wanganui: 1920-1922 106 Chapter EIGHT A Career in New Zealand: 1922-1964 118 Conclusion 161 Volume 2 - Documentation 1 1 Catalogue of Works by Edith Collier 2 2 Appendices 144 3 Bibliography Volume 3 - Reproductions 1 List of Reproductions 3 Section ONE Reproductions of work by Edith Collier 15 Section TWO Collier family photographs and biographical matelial 411 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition willllot need to be told the story in detail; how [s]he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cut out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair; had [her] good nights and bad mornings; snatched at ideas and lost them; saw [her] book plain before [her] and it vanished; acted [her] people's parts as [s]he ate; mouthed them as [s]he walked; now cried; now laughed; vacillated between this style and that; now preferred the heroic and pompous; next the plain and simple; now the vales of Tempe; then the fields of Kent or Cornwall; and could not decide whether [s]he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world. Virginia Woolf Orlando (1992), p. 48-9 I am ~specially grateful to my supervisor Dr Pamela GelTish Nunn for assisting me in this journey, for introducing me to Edith Collier, for encouraging, challenging, and supporting the research and writing of this thesis, and for offering invaluable advice and direction. I am also grateful to my co-supervisor, Ms Julie King, for her commitment to this project and her most valuable contribution, particularly in the area of New Zealand alt. I am also very grateful to Barbara Stewalt, who has helped preserve Edith Collier's work, supplied important information and archival material, and whose friendship and support has been a mainstay. I would like to thank Patricia Lonsdale and Jean Stewart for their special in­ sights and involvement in this project. I am much indebted to all the people who provided information about the artist, and gave me access to their works. These include Gordon and Annette Collier, Hazel Collier, Judith Donald, Craig Collier, Henry and Cynthia Collier, Arthur and Robin Collier, Sylvia Speal', Hilal'y Collier, Shirley Belton, Audrey Poppe, Colin and Lynne Stewalt, Anita Lampp, Andrew and Gail Collier, Miranda Stewalt, Carolyn Lampp, Pam and Mervyn Matthews, Donald and Hilary Stewart, Maurice Collier, Cameron and Sarah Collier, Christopher Collier, Ian and Betty Collier, Helen Gordon, Alan and Helen Stewart, Keith and Beverley Stewalt, Joan Maher, Brian and Ada Collier, Quentin and Lynette Collier, Lenore Tewano, Phillip Collier, Mal'garet Benson, Sir Ivor and Lady Richal'dson, and Lewanna McLean. I am very much indebted to Suzanne Vincent Marshall for talting all the photographs of Edith Collier's work contained in the catalogue, to Molly Morton for her many hours of help and technical assistance in producing the catalogue, and to Kirstie Murdoch for her much appreciated assistance with proof-reading. I wish also to thank Nico Beger, Deborah Frederikse, Philippa Wadsworth, Linda Tyler, Carole Acheson, Linda Gill, Elizabeth Eastmond, Roger Collins, Joanna Paul, Roger Butler, Janie Gillespie, Richard Wotton, Denis Rainforth, Bill Milbank, Raewyne Johnson, Paul Rayner, Celia Thompson, Ann McEwan, Jillian Cassidy, Devon Sinclair, Mary Galvin, and Jim Cullinan. I am grateful to the Fine Arts and Fine Arts Library Staff of the University of Canterbury, the Fine Arts Staff of the Wanganui Regional Community Polytechnic, Wanganui Regional Community Polytechnic, Wanganui Regional Community Polytechnic Computer Graphics Department, Wanganui Regional Community Polytechnic Library, Sarjeant Art Gallery, Wanganui District Council Archives, Wanganui Museum, Alexander Library, Christchurch Public Library, Te Papa, Alexander Turnbull Library, Massey University, Victoria & Albert­ National Art Library, Westminster Archives, Witt Library, Women's Art Library, Manchester University Library, Art Gallery of South Australia, and National Gallery of Australia. 2 I am indebted to the University of Canterbury for its financial support in the form of a University of Canterbury Doctoral Scholarship, and to financial support from the McGibbon Fund Award, Sadie Balldnd - N. Z. F. U. W., and Wanganui Regional Community Polytechnic Research and Ethics Committee. My special thanks to my family, Jeremy Drayton Thomson, Katherine Lovelock, Suzanne Vincent Marshall, and Patricia, Malcolm, Guy and Chrisie Drayton, for their love and support. 3 We should ourselves be sorry to think that posterity should judge us by a patchwork of our letters, preserved by chance, independent of their context, written perhaps in a fit ofdespondency or irritation, divorced, above all,from the myriad little strands which colour and compose our peculiar existence, and which in their multiplicity, their variety and their triviality, are vivid to ourselves alone, llncommunicable even to those nearest to us, sharing our daily life .... Still, within our limitations it is necessary to arrive at some conclusions, certain facts do emerge. Vita Sackville-West Introducti on, The Diary of the Lady Anne Clifford (1923) n. p. 4 Introduction In late autumn of 1924, Edith Collier received a letter from her English cousin, Fannie Collier, at that time a lecturer in economics at Manchester University: I had a fine letter from Harry last week, I was so glad to get it.... He tells me you have sold many of your pictures; I'm very cheered to hear Wanganui appreciates your work in a sensible way. Have you got decent prices? The next question is even more important: Are you tuming out fresh work? Don't forget you've to make history as the N. Z. painter of the early 20th century.l Fannie's faith in Edith Collier's talent as an artist, and her conviction that future fame would follow on as a natural consequence of her application of this talent, are echoed in the comments of numerous other people associated with the artist. In 1916, her brother HatTy wrote: "I wish you all the luck possible at your exams .... I believe you are of the stuff that excels."2 Even more significantly, Margaret Macpherson3 and Frances Hodgkins, Edith Collier's most influential teachers, held a similar view of their younger protegee's prospects and talent. In a letter sent to Edith Collier's mother from Bonmahon in Southern Ireland (1915), Margaret Macpherson concluded: I think you will be astonished at the quality of her work .... I do not want to eulogise her because I am her teacher, but I assure you, she has an excellent talent in portraiture and ought to do well in New Zealand.4 Frances Hodgkins, in a letter to her own mother (1920), observed: I have one very bright N. Zealander, from Wanganui, Collier by name - who is coming on wonderfully - I'll make something of her I feel sure .... 5 These accolades and the high expectation from her family, friends and teachers form a contrast to the relative 'silence' of their subject, the rutist, Edith Collier herself. She has Letter from Fannie Collier to Edith Collier, 15 May 1924. Edith Collier Papers, Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui. 2 Letter from Harry Collier to Edith Collier, 13 January 1916. Edith Collier Papers, Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui. 3 Although her name was spelt McPherson on her birth certificate, from 1902 until her marriage to William Preston in 1919, she used a number of alternative spellings.
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