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Overview
This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).
This painting shows the view from William Allen’s own backyard at 37 Fergusson Street, Musselburgh. In both content and style it is unusual for the period in New Zealand art. As Allen himself acknowledged, ‘[T]hat it should be an unusual painting for that period is not surprising because when Bob [Robert N] Field & I arrived in Dunedin in 1925 we found that NZ Art had a definite Victorian flavour.’1 Allen trained at the Royal College of Art, London, from 1919 to 1923, and had a good working knowledge of British and European modernism.
The subject matter has its origins in the type of social realism of the Camden Town Group and the London Group of painters, though it is treated in a more optimistic manner. Allen has used a brighter palette, predominantly based around the green and salmon pink, counterbalanced by dark brown, a brownish mauve and the blue of the sky. The multi-directional and broken brushwork supports the forms and shapes of the compositional elements — the fences, buildings and the roofs of the houses — and gives structure to the image, which is intensified by the strong local colours.
A very ordinary subject, a totally different ‘landscape’ from the ones New Zealand art audiences were used to: works like this took some time to be accepted for exhibition by the Otago Art Society, whose members were highly suspicious of modernism. ‘[O]ur work was received with much suspicion by the pundits of the Otago Art Society,’ Allen recalled. ‘They had heard of the eruption of “Modern Art” in Europe and seemed to think that Field & I were bent on spreading these new fangled ideas in NZ … In fact one prominent member, who shall be nameless, went so far as to declare that “Field must be mad”.’2
Allen’s name is inseparable from that of Field. A ‘harmonious and happy duo’,3 their teaching at the School of Art at King Edward Technical College was inspirational to a whole generation of students. As art master at Nelson College from 1933 until 1946, Allen also made his own significant contribution to the fostering of sound and challenging art practice in his students.
Tony Mackle
1 WH Allen, letter to Tony Mackle, 14 April 1983, WH Allen object file, 1983-0003-1, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
2 Ibid.
3 Harry V Miller, letter to Tony Mackle, 28 February 1983, WH Allen object file, 1983-0003-1, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.