Landscape, Hawke's Bay, 1878. Oil on canvas. 75 × 120 cm.
Lot 016 · Paintings
Landscape, Hawke's Bay
John Gully
Year
1878
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
75 × 120 cm
Estimate
NZD 20,000–28,000
A panoramic view of the Hawke's Bay plains from an elevated vantage point, the composition stretching from the Kaweka Range in the west to the coast in the east. The light is the warm, golden light of late afternoon in summer — a quality of New Zealand light that Gully captured better than any of his contemporaries. The foreground is occupied by a stand of native bush, rendered with botanical precision; beyond it, the plains open out in a series of receding planes that give the composition its extraordinary sense of depth and distance.
Artist
John Gully
John Gully (1819–1888) was an English-born painter who emigrated to New Zealand in 1852 and became one of the most important landscape painters of the colonial period. Working in the tradition of the English watercolourists — particularly Turner and Cox — he developed a distinctive response to the New Zealand landscape that combined topographical accuracy with a romantic sensibility. His large oil paintings of the Southern Alps and the Canterbury Plains are among the most celebrated works in New Zealand art history, but his smaller studies of the North Island — less well known — are often more immediate and more personal.