Provenance:

McIntyre family collection, London

Purchased from John Leech Gallery, Auckland circa 1990

Fletcher Trust Collection

Raymond McIntyre was an emigre New Zealand artist whose departure was an enormous loss to painting in this country. Born in Christchurch he studied with Petrus van der Velden and attended evening classes organised by the Canterbury College School of Art. In 1905 he joined a sketch club where he met Sydney Lough Thompson who had recently returned from four years study in Europe. From 1906 -1908 McIntyre shared a studio in Cathedral Square with Leonard Booth who described him as an enthusiastic disciple of Whistler. In 1906 -1907 McIntyre was able to observe for himself the new techniques of impressionism when twenty works by English Art Club members were shown at the New Zealand International Exhibition in Christchurch.

These were to be enormously influential in forming McIntyre's modern style of painting, a factor which did not always endear him to the art establishment. Consequently, in 1909 at the age of thirty, he left for England where he began an intensive period of study with such noted artists as Walter Sickert and William Nicholson.

His diverse work included street scenes, a subject he shared with the Camden Town Group, and from 1920 he began to paint rivers and parks. McIntyre was also a talented musician, writer, printmaker, theatre and music critic. For some years he was art critic for the Architectural Review. He was a Christian Scientist from 1907 and in 1933 refused an operation for a hernia. The resulting infection caused his death which could have been prevented if he had permitted medical treatment.