Dominion Art Gallery and Museum, Wellington

item details

NameDominion Art Gallery and Museum, Wellington

ProductionNancy Bolton; artist; circa 1939; Wellington

Classificationprints, linocuts, works on paper

Materialspaper

Materials Summarylinocut

Techniqueslinoleum-block printing

DimensionsImage: 119mm (width), 175mm (height)

Registration Number1978-0022-1

Credit lineGift of the Alexander Turnbull Library, 1978

Overview

This is from a set of 12 lino-cuts that Nancy Bolton made in 1939. The prints all show Wellington scenes, and many of them are architectural. Here Bolton has emphasised the scale and modernity of the new Dominion Museum building (which had opened three years earlier, in 1936). Her striking use of shadow, and the view up steep steps to the building’s impressive façade, give the print a modern, cosmopolitan energy.

Nancy Bolton was born in Sydney and worked there as a commercial artist before moving to New Zealand in 1939. She worked in Wellington as a freelance illustrator, painter and printmaker, and was also commissioned to make a large mural for Wellington’s Dixon St Flats in 1943. Bolton had a solo exhibition of prints at drawings at Wellington’s Architectural Centre Gallery in 1955. Although she practised in New Zealand under her maiden name ‘Nancy Bolton’, she began to be known by her married name Nancy Parker when she returned to Australia in 1955.