LAURENCE WILLIAM WILSON (1851-1912),
Mount Earnslaw / Pikirakatahi (2,819m -9,249 ft)
New Zealand
In Mount Earnslaw, 1887, oil on canvas., 84x120cm
The mountain
Mount Earnslaw, (2,819m -9,249 ft) also named Pikirakatahi by Māori is located on New Zealand's South Island. It is named after Earnslaw (formerly Herneslawe) village in the parish of Eccles, Berwickshire, hometown of the surveyor John Turnbull Thomson's father.
Mount Earnslaw is within Mount Aspiring National Park at the southern end of the Forbes Range of New Zealand's Southern Alps. It is located 25 kilometres north of the settlement of Glenorchy, which lies at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu.
The painter
Laurence William Wilson emigrated to Auckland in 1877 and then travelled extensively to settle in Dunedin in 1884. He painted in both oils and watercolours, became a painting companion of George O'Brien and a teacher. One of his pupils was the Dunedin artist Alfred O'Keefe. In 1895, LW Wilson together with Grace Joel, Alfred O'Keefe, Jane Wimperis and Girolami Nerli formed the Easel Club , a breakaway from the Dunedin Establishment, which offered a programme of special classes and the introduction of a professional lady model for life drawing. In 1904 LW Wilson left Dunedin for Melbourne where he spent 5 months on a commissioned painting of the city before he set out for England, eventually returning to New Zealand via India and Africa. He exhibited with the Canterbury Society of Arts in 1882 and the Otago Art Society between 1994 and 1904. His work was included in the NZ and South Seas Exhibition Dunedin 1889-90 and at the St Louis Exposition in 1904. LW Wilson is represented in the collections of all the major public galleries in New Zealand.
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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau