29 September 2004
Pumpkin Cottage Exhibition
Venue: Efil Doog Garden Gallery
1995 Akatarawa Road, Upper Hutt
Opening: 1st October 2004 until 31st March 2005
40 Early, Original Paintings by Pumpkin Cottage Artists
These Artists painted at Pumpkin Cottage, Fergusson Drive, Silverstream from 1892 through to 1949 and include paintings
by James Nairn, Dorothy-Kate Richmond, Archibald Nicoll, Hermina Arndt, Frederick Sedgwick, Margaret Stoddart, Mary
Tripe, Mabel Hill, Isobel Field, Noel Barraud, W S Wauchop, Nugent Welch and Sidney Higgs.
The group was established by James McLaughlan Nairn and over the years has been known as the Nairn School, The Pumpkin
Cottage Group, The Silverstream School, The Wellington Sketch and Studio Club and in latter years The Wellington Art
Club.
Nairn was an elected member of the Glasgow Art Club. From Scotland he went to Paris and studied at the Julian School and
in January 1890 arrived in Dunedin on the "Forfarshire". He was the first impressionist painter to arrive in Wellington.
This new style was immediately critised by the Art establishment and critics of the day. His work was initially
described as "atrocious" and "detrimental" but later, on his death in 1904 an article in the Evening Post said, "At
first his frank departure from the old and venerated canons was a bar to ready recognition of his genius".
The impressionist paintings of the Pumpkin Cottage artists depict mostly scenes of the Upper Valley area. The Cottage
itself was the focus of many of the artists with the most recent and possibly the last painting of it by Darcy Nicholas
in 1975.
The vitality and energy of the artists that frequented the Pumpkin Cottage is a lasting legacy that can now be enjoyed.
Efil Doog Gallery is open from 10a.m. - 4.30p.m. Wednesday to Sunday.
ENDS