PROVENANCE
Collection of Alison Disbrowe (Artist's niece) until 1996
Traditional & Contemporary Art Auction International Art Centre, 23/04/1996
Private Collection, Auckland

EXHIBITED
By the Waters of Babylon -The Art of A. Lois White Auckland City Art Gallery, 1995 Original Auckland Art Gallery exhibiton label affixed verso

Throughout her life Lois struggled to reconcile two sides of her personality: the God-fearing dutiful daughter and the creative artist. She grew up in a financially comfortable middle-class family, and was encouraged in her artistic and intellectual pursuits by her father.

During the 1930s and early 1940s Lois White was considered a mainstream Auckland artist with a significant national profile. Many of her figurative compositions were reproduced in local newspapers and the topical allegory of her work was commented on in reviews. Her most controversial painting, 'War makers' (1937), is a much-reproduced example of the anti-war commentary she concentrated on during these years. By the late 1930s the war series were interspersed with religious and female allegories, portraiture and mural commissions. The female allegories, modelled on friends and students in symbolic guise, were a consistent attempt to articulate a celebratory approach to female-centred sexuality. They were recognised at the time as lively and vigorous, but nonetheless decorative; their real importance within the body of her work did not fully emerge until her retrospective exhibition, organised by the Auckland City Art Gallery, in 1994.

The years from 1947 to 1951 marked White's major period of production. Her painting technique was highly refined and her palette took full advantage of the extended range of art materials available in the post-war years. It was also a time when her reputation in Auckland began to fade. Many of her most accomplished paintings were painted and exhibited with the New Group, which she helped form in 1948. These Elam-trained artists were interested in figuration and thorough draughtsmanship, and their work was regarded as a conservative reaction to that of younger artists who were discovering modernism and developing semi-abstract and abstract art. Colin McCahon, keeper of the Auckland City Art Gallery collection from 1954 to 1964, curated a number of contemporary painting exhibitions, but White's interest in symbolism and her mannered style of representation guaranteed her exclusion from these exhibitions. Without the support of an appreciative audience she became disconsolate and her production declined significantly. Working on at Elam, despite feeling embattled, she was one of the last of the old guard of Fisher's regime to retire from the school. Two years before her retirement, she and Ida Eise spent a year in Europe, visiting numerous galleries and churches.

In 1975 the Wellington dealer Peter McLeavey called at the Blockhouse Bay house White shared with her sister. He was greeted by an artist who thought of herself as 'old fashioned'. Many of her early compositions were stacked in her studio and garage. In 1977 McLeavey organised White's first solo exhibition and brought her work to the attention of the galleries and collectors. She was 74 years old. Lois White died in Auckland on 13 September 1984. Her position and individuality in New Zealand art had been obscured by critics linking her work with that of A. J. C. Fisher, and their insistence on viewing her painting within the criteria of modernism. However, her contribution has been reappraised through the 1977 and 1994 exhibitions, the latter revealing the full range of her art."

NICOLA GREEN 'White, Anna Lois 1903 - 1984' Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 16 December 2003 URL: http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/