HUNT, FRANCES IRWIN (1890-1981)

"King Country Landscape, NZ" (c.1940) 
oil on board
40 x 50cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Hunt is a forgotten, award-winning New Zealand Modernist. She was born in Cambridge, Waikato. About 1901 the family moved to a farm at Paemako, about 19 miles from Te Kuiti, & Frances was educated at Malmerley Collegiate in Parnell. She returned to Paemako in 1909 when her father died. As the family's only surviving daughter, Frances faced a life of spinsterhood as her mother's companion. During the First World War she ran the farm in the absence of her younger brothers. In the early 1920s Frances & her mother moved to Auckland & settled into a large house in Ranfurly Road West, Epsom, where they lived together until Annie's death in 1947. Frances seized the opportunities available to develop her interest in art, taking lessons in watercolour at Frank Wright's academy in Victoria Arcade. During the 1920s she produced numerous romantic, topographically accurate watercolours of picturesque spots around Auckland, & exhibited them at the Auckland Society of Arts, of which she was elected a working member in 1924. The following year she was elected to the National Art Association of New Zealand. Possibly fearing stagnation, she ceased exhibiting watercolours at the Society of Arts & in 1932, at the age of 41, enrolled in the Elam School of Art's 3-year full-time course. She also joined the Rutland Group in 1937. Now working in oils, she continued to favour landscapes, but her repertoire included still lifes and portraits. She painted at Taupō, Rotorua, Waikaremoana & near her childhood home in the King Country, working up sketches made on these trips in her studio at home. In 1940 her work was included in two national centennial exhibitions celebrating NZ art, & she was awarded the Bledisloe Medal. The Frances Irwin Hunt Art Scholarship is offered annually by the Māori Education Foundation. She was also a big supporter & patron of NZ female artists!! Her work is represented in prestigious collections such as the Auckland War Memorial & the Auckland Art Gallery.