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Overview
This pen and ink drawing is by the New Zealand artist Helen Crabb. Crabb began as a painter, but by the 1940s and ‘50s she was mainly producing works like this one. Using minimal materials of pen line and paper, Crabb's closely-observed drawings bring her subjects to life. We don't have a record of who this person was, but Crabb often drew her friends and students.
Helen Crabb was born in the Manawatū in 1891. She took art and sculpture evening classes in Palmerston North, before moving to Sydney in 1913 to study at Julian Ashton’s art school. Crabb spent most of the next 30 years living in Sydney and the UK, first as a student, then as an art teacher. She returned to Wellington in 1943, where she set up an art school at her studio on Hobson Street.
In Wellington, Crabb took on the professional name ‘Barc’. She exhibited with other local artists like Helen Stewart, Evelyn Page and T.A. McCormack. Crabb taught a number of students who went on to have successful careers, including Avis Higgs, Joan Fanning and Patricia Fry.
References:
Patricia Fry, ‘Memories of Barc: Helen Priscilla Crabb (1891-1972), Art New Zealand 52 (Spring 1989), pp. 91-93.
Beryl Hughes. 'Crabb, Helen Priscilla', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 2000. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/5c43/crabb-helen-priscilla (accessed 16 January 2023)