Purchased from a One Man Exhibition, John Leech Gallery, 1964

Original label affixed verso

Peter McIntyre was born in Dunedin. His father, a lithograpic artist, founded Dunedin's Caxton Printing Company. Young McIntyre attended Otago Boys' High School and the University of Otago. He studied painting under Dunedin artist Alfred O'Keeffe. McIntrye left New Zealand to study at London's Slade School of Art from 1931 until 1934. He worked in Britain as a free-lance artist until enlisting in 1939 with the 34th Anti-Tank Battery, a New Zealand unit formed in London. In 1941 whilst serving in Egypt, he was appointed as New Zealand's official war artist by Major General Freyberg. From 1941 to 1945 McIntyre recored action in Crete, North Africa and Italy. His work was exhibited in New Zealand and Europe and reproduced in magazines such as the Illustrated London News and the New Zealand Listener. His work from this period belongs to the collection of war art at the National Archives in Wellington.

Returning to New Zealand in 1946 McIntyre began a long and illustrious post war career . He lived and exhibited in Wellington, frequently undertaking painting trips abroad. In 1962 A.H. Reed published The Painted Years, the first of eight books he would illustrate and write between then and 1981. Travels to Antarctica, Hong Kong, the Pacific Islands and the American West provided material for these sought-after publications. Many of the Hong Kong paintings were seen throughout the United States in a three year touring exhibition.

McIntyre owned a holiday cottage in Kakahi which became both his studio and retreat. The King Country inspired some of the artist's finest work and he painted the landscape, inhabitants, native bush, rivers and farming scenes of the central North Island. This work, King Country Farmer, convey's his affinity with both the landscape and personalities of the region.

In 1970 McIntyre was awarded an OBE. In the 1970s and 1980s his work continued to draw attention through record prices and gallery attendances. A retrospective exhibition of McIntyre's war paintings was held at the City Gallery in Wellington in 1995. Opening on 22 July, the show had been visited by more than 22,000 people when the artist died in Wellington on 11 September. Today he is recognised as one of this country's most important artists.