PROVENANCE

Estate of Evelyn Page

Evelyn Page was commissioned to undertake this painting of the Wellington Law Courts in 1970 - the very same year that her place in the New Zealand art historical canon was cemented with an important retrospective at Wellington's National Art Gallery. That the commission for this work occurred at such a watershed moment in the artist's career can be viewed as something of a metaphor: Page's work was by this point widely celebrated and acknowledged for its modern vivacity and destabilisation of the mundane, tired ways of depicting New Zealand. The capital city's old Law Courts, on the other hand, stood as a powerful symbol of those deeply ingrained pillars of judicial tradition and establishment in our country. As such, the act of revisiting this traditionalist subject matter through a new and exciting modernist lens was a powerful statement, and truly brought to light the emphatic change achieved by Page in unlocking the potential of a new modern visual language for New Zealand art.

When encountering this work, the viewer is immediately struck by what a brilliant expression of painterly expertise it is. Having been heavily influenced by French masters such as Matisse and Degas, Page has herein adapted this impressionistic language for a uniquely identifiable New Zealand context, and deployed an assured deftness of brushstroke to convey rich and lively collisions of colour. Daring to express colour and form in such a vibrant and confronting manner, Page has also executed perspectival flattening in a manner which contributes to a gracefully synthesised compositional construction: the buildings have been thrust to the forefront of the canvas; all surrounding trees, buildings and people have been stacked on the same plane of this closely woven composition.

Old Law Courts Wellington adroitly demonstrates of all of the formal qualities which served Evelyn Page as a pioneer of New Zealand modernism, marking this emblematic painting as one of the most significant architectural works by the artist to have been presented to the market in recent years.