SHERWOOD, MAUD (1880-1956)

“Old Country Road By The Bay” (c.1930)
watercolour
46 x 54.5cm
Signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Sherwood is a reverred, award-winning New Zealand Modernist. She studied under the Scotsman James Nairn, a devotee of Impressionism, at Wellington Technical College, where she was also taught by Mabel Hill and Mary Elizabeth Tripe. She left for Europe on a scholarship in 1911, a year after her first solo exhibition at Wellington’s McGregor Wright Gallery. After London, she headed for the Studio Colarossi where fellow New Zealander Frances Hodgkins was teaching watercolour painting, then moved to the studio of Tudor Hart. As a participant in Hart’s sketching group, she toured picturesque parts of England, France and Holland, developing a fluid and broad treatment of the figure and landscape. Maud left Europe for Australia in 1913 and established herself in Sydney, where she entered into a short-lived marriage (1917-20) with businessman Alfred Sherwood; they divorced in 1926. It is believed that she studied for a time with Julian Ashton at the Sydney Art School. In Australia she was especially appreciated for her watercolours and in 1924 was elected to the committee of the Watercolour Institute in Sydney, the only woman member of a group which included such luminaries of the Australian art establishment as Arthur Streeton, Sydney Long & Blamire Young. She began exhibiting with the Society of Artists in 1914. From the 1942 exhibition the Art Gallery of NSW purchased another watercolour, At the Show . She also exhibited with the Society of Women Painters & was appointed to its Council. Her works are represented in major Galleries & collections around the world, including the Art Gallery Of Ballarat, NGV, NGA, NERAM, Te Papa & Dunedin Art Gallery.