Grannie O'Ready's Kitchen

Edith Collier, Artist

This is one of the paintings in our collection. It was made in Ireland in circa 1914.
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Object Detail


About the Work
"This is a very interesting work by this famous Whanganui artist that captures the scene in rich colours, beautifully. The donors of this work Geoffrey and Di Martin were personal Auckland friends of mine and I travelled with Geoffrey from Auckland when he made the gift to the Sarjeant Gallery at a special function when Bill Milbank was the Director. The Martins donated this lovely painting in memory of Richard Priest, Geoffrey’s great friend and former Whanganui boy from the celebrated Priest cricketing family."
Donald Trott, Executive Chairman of the NZ Opera School, for the Dec 2019 instalment of the My Choice exhibition series.
Measurements
Frame 611 x 720 x 37mm
Image 495 x 604mm
Media
oil on canvas on board
Description
Framed interior painting of a kitchen with some hens in the foreground. Wooden frame, painted grey.
A large number of key works by Edith Collier were completed during time she spent studying and working with the Australian artist Margaret MacPherson, in Bonmahon, Ireland in 1914 and 1915. Collier made two trips to Bonmahon, and wrote to her parents: ‘A grand place for painting. Models of all sorts, seascapes, and landscape without going far’. In 1915, she accompanied Margaret MacPherson and twenty-one fellow art students to Bonmahon for a stay that lasted from March to September or October. The fishing village offered an ideal location for a summer school, as students could live at relatively low cost with local families.

Edith was encouraged by Macpherson to use the people of Bonmahon as her most significant subject matter. Her family also eagerly awaited new insights into the life and people of the village. Edith’s sister Dorothy reported on how Peasant Woman of Bonmahon was received in Wanganui: ‘Dad likes your Irish Biddy very much, quite proud of you . . .’ In this work, as with other portraits completed in Bonmahon, Edith takes the traditional if not clichéd nineteenth-century theme of the worthy but impoverished peasant, and applies to it a new Post-Impressionist vision.
(from exhibition text Edith Collier Selected Irish Works Feb 2012 by Greg Donson)
Credit Line
Collection of the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui. Gift of Geoffrey and Di Martin,1998, in memory of Richard Alec Priest. This work was conserved with the generous support of Colin and June Whitlock in 2004.
Collection Type
Permanent collection
Acquisition Date
28 Sep 1998

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Accession Number:
1998/23/1