Coastal Trader at Wharf

Maude Burge was born in Wellington in 1865, one of thirteen children in the wealthy Williams family. Her paternal grandfather was the missionary Henry Williams, her maternal grandfather the portrait painter and Wairarapa station holder William Beetham. Burge initially trained in Wellington with the painter James Nairn, before working in C.F. Goldie’s Auckland studio at the turn of the century. Te Papa holds two of her portraits of Ina Te Papatahi painted during this period (1959-0001-2 and 1959-0001-1).

In 1909 Burge married the artist George Aylesford Burge and the couple emigrated to Europe in around 1910. While living in England she painted with Frank Brangwyn and Philip Connard. She also lived and painted in France, Spain and Morocco. She sent her work to New Zealand regularly to be exhibited at the Academy of Fine Arts, although she did not return to live in New Zealand until about 1937.

Burge is part of a generation of expatriate New Zealand artists. She had particularly strong relationships with other New Zealand painters living in Europe – Frances Hodgkins spent time staying with the Burges in St Tropez in the 1930s, and Maude studied painting in France with Gwen Knight and Flora Scales. Other significant woman artists of this generation, with similar biographies, include Rhona Haszard and Mina Arndt.

This work is a fine example of the watercolour paintings that Burge produced while living in Europe in the 1910s. With its watery, impressionistic brushstrokes, it has stylistic similarities to Hodgkins’ early work. As a genre painting, of a picturesque foreign scene, it is typical of both Burge’s work and that of other New Zealand artists of this period.

Burge has an important place in New Zealand’s art history, both as an example of the expatriate lives of her generation, and as a bridge between late 19^th and early 20^th-century practices.