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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  The Peter Jarvis & Helene Phillips Collection
• Sale Date:
  30 Nov 2017 ~ 6.30pm (New Zealand Daylight Time)
• Lot #:
  38
• Lot Description:
  Ngaio Marsh
  Nor West Goes Over
  oil on board
  555mm x 700mm
  signed Ngaio Marsh in graphite lower right; signed Ngaio Marsh and inscribed Nor West Goes Over verso
• Exhibited:
  The Group, Canterbury Society of Arts, November 1936, cat. no. 88.
• Notes:
  ESSAY: Long before Ngaio Marsh was a world-famous crime writer and nationally celebrated Shakespeare producer, she was a painter. She studied at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts during World War I and, in 1927, was one of the half-dozen women (Margaret Frankel and Evelyn Page were others) who started The Group, a boutique progressive alternative to the Canterbury Society of Arts (CSA), which, eventually, had most of the best painters in the country as members. Marsh’s most active period as a painter seems to have been the mid-1930s when she appeared several times in shows of The Group, at the short-lived New Zealand Society of Artists in 1933–34 and in CSA annual exhibitions. She was never a prolific artist and exhibited only about 20 paintings in all between 1933 and 1940. Most of her paintings were back-country landscapes as some of her titles suggest: Aorangi, Musterer, McKenzie Country, High Country, Mt Gold. Nor West Goes Over was one of four paintings she exhibited at the 1936 exhibition of The Group. Two-thirds of the painting is devoted to artfully depicted clouds and sky – a clear blue space above the mountains is a famous and often-painted feature of Canterbury landscapes by artists of The Group, such as Leo Bensemann, Olivia Spencer Bower and Louise Henderson. In the foreground, pale poplars provide vertical accents against the predominantly horizontal lay of the land. Nor West Goes Over is an attractive and rare example of a painting by a New Zealander most famous for other things but no slouch with the brush either. Peter Simpson
• Estimate:
  NZ$20,000 - 30,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.