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Overview
The Wellingtonian Nugent Welch (1881-1970) combined a love of the outdoors with an accomplished – if conservative – painting style, and became one of New Zealand's best-known landscape artists. A full-time artist from 1908, he worked in both oils and watercolours, but his standard format was the medium-sized watercolour, either painted on the spot or worked up later from sketches. Welch skilfully blended sky and land into well-balanced compositions underpinned by closely related tonal ranges. His images are distinguished by their emphasis on the forms and shapes of the water and landscape, and by his subtle and understated control of the medium.
This attractive watercolour of an old farmhouse and adjoining buildings probably dates from Welch's period as an official war artist in 1918-1919. The windows, lime wash walls and tile hung roofs suggest that it located in Northern France or Belgium, and is a far cry from his more harrowing and desolate 'aftermath of war' landscapes.
The painting originally belonged to the family of Wellington businessman, print collector and major benefactor to the National Art Gallery, Sir John Ilott (1884-1973), and it was given to Te Papa by his daughter, Mrs Suzanne McKellar, in 1999.