Date: 1899
Media: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 303 × 459 mm
Catalogue number: 2023–1–43
Credit line: The Field Collection, Toi Mahara
James McLachlan Nairn was a Scottish artist associated with a group of progressive artists, the ‘Glasgow Boys’, in the 1880s. He arrived in Dunedin in January 1890 in time to see the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition that William Mathew Hodgkins had helped to organise. His recent seascapes were shown to the Dunedin art fraternity at a private dinner held by David Con Hutton (1843–1910). He also read a paper on decorative art to the students of the Otago School of Art in late July 1890 before moving to Wellington. Frances Hodgkins presumably met him during this year.
From 1891 until 1898 Nairn exhibited his work alongside Frances Hodgkins at the Otago Art Society. The sale catalogue of William Mathew Hodgkins’ paintings at his death in 1898 shows that the family owned at least one of his paintings.
Nairn brought with him to New Zealand an adventurousness with colour and a muted impressionism. This is evident in Happy Valley in this low key scene of fishing boats on a rocky shore in Wellington. Light is the real subject of the painting and the low view point chosen by the artist allowed him to capture its various effects on water, rocks and sky.
Happy Valley was painted in 1899 the year after William Mathew Hodgkins’ death and so must have been acquired by Isabel and Will Field. In this year Nairn was elected vice-president of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, nine years after his arrival in New Zealand.
(Sourced from notes by Avenal McKinnon, Frances Hodgkins, the link with Kapiti: The Field Collection, Mahara Gallery, 2000).
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