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Overview
This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).
In 1929 the notoriously dull and drizzly Dunedin weather was making even the English-born Robert Nettleton Field feel trapped and restless. Looking around for something to pass the time, his imagination was sparked by the patterns in the woodgrain of his servery door. Field was inspired to paint a biblical scene on the door, leaving the wood bare in places to suggest Christ’s hair and the contours of his body.
The painting depicts a rear three-quarter view of Jesus standing before four disciples. It references a story in John 4:4–26 in which Jesus recounts how he converted an outcast Samaritan woman as they stopped to drink at a well. This passage has been a relatively common source of inspiration throughout art history, serving as an allegory for the universality of Jesus’ teachings. However, Field’s choice to depict Jesus telling the story to his disciples — rather than paint him with the Samaritan woman — is unusual. The approach reflects Field’s personal beliefs about spreading Christian ideas in the modern world.
Here, Field gives the traditional subject a modern treatment, using found materials and eschewing conventional laws of composition. The elongated figures are arranged to fill the entire frame, using the vivid, unrealistic colours and shallow sense of space found in Byzantine icon painting. Across the surface, Field has applied a brilliant stippling of complementary colours, adopting the pointillist technique of French post-impressionist Georges Seurat — a technique Field had studied at the Royal College of Art in London in the early 1920s.
When Field exhibited this painting in Christchurch in 1931, it was a revelation to a young Toss Woollaston. He was awestruck by Field’s modern take and by the excitement with which he painted. It prompted Woollaston to move to Dunedin to study with Field, who had come to New Zealand in 1925 under the La Trobe scheme to improve the standards of art instruction in the country. There, Field introduced young artists like Woollaston and Colin McCahon to the work of artists who had been changing the face of European art. As one of the earliest modernist paintings in New Zealand,
Christ at the well of Samaria helped introduce ideas that would shape the local development of modern art.
Chelsea Nichols
This is a painting on wood, made by Robert Nettleton Field on the servery door of his house at 109 Tomahawk Road, Dunedin. The wood grain is left bare to suggest Christ's hair, and the contours of his hip, arm and leg. This willingness to incorporate the 'found' qualities of the material into the finished work of art reveals Field's training at the Royal College of Art in London, his knowledge of developments in British and European art in the early twentieth century, and his expertise in both painting and sculpture.
The La Trobe Scheme
Field came to New Zealand in 1925 under a scheme initiated by William Saunderson La Trobe, the superintendent of technical education, to improve the quality of art instruction. The La Trobe Scheme introduced a new generation of artists in this country to contemporary art from Britain and the continent. Paintings like Christ at the Well of Samaria gave local artists the chance to see modern art principles up close, and to study contemporary developments that were changing art in Britain.
Theories of modern art
Field was a conduit between the post-impressionist movement in England, and a new generation of artists working in this country. He was a disciple of British art critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell, and the Bloomsbury Group. In Christ at the Well of Samaria, Field applies vivid complementary colours in a pointillist technique first developed in France in the late nineteenth century, as well as modelling form through colour.
Field as teacher
Field attracted many students to study with him, including Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston, who later wrote that 'Dunedin in 1930 was the most artistically enlightened place in New Zealand'.