Date: 1887
Place: Southern Alps
Media: watercolour on paper pasted on to board
Dimensions: 384 × 568 mm
Catalogue number: 2023–1–34
Credit line: The Field Collection, Toi Mahara
Edmund Gouldsmith’s painting is a recognisable depiction of a New Zealand high country scrubby bush landscape. As he exhibited with the Otago Art Society, Gouldsmith was well acquainted with the Hodgkins circle and may have accompanied William Mathew Hodgkins on an ascent of Mt Sefton. The painting is shown on the wall in a photograph of Frances Hodgkins in the drawing room of Cranmore Lodge. Another work by Gouldsmith, Dartmoor, was listed among the paintings sold after William Mathew Hodgkins’ death.
Frances Hodgkins mentions Gouldsmith’s work enthusiastically. In 1897 she wrote to Isabel Field contrasting the ‘faded’ paintings of James Nairn and Fanny Richardson with ‘…Mr Gouldsmith’s beautiful fresh oils hung beside them and with the colour as fresh as when he first painted them’. (Linda Gill, Letters of Frances Hodgkins, 1993, p50). She also admired his work shown at the Royal British Artists exhibition in 1901: ‘The best watercolour in the room was one by Gouldsmith, a freshly painted coast scene vigorous and strong.’ (Linda Gill, p83).
(Sourced from notes by Avenal McKinnon, ‘Frances Hodgkins, the link with Kapiti: The Field Collection‘, Mahara Gallery, 2000).