October 28, 2015
Te Papa Strutting about land wars pic
The national museum Te Papa Tongarewa has paid $1.5 million for a painting set in Taranaki during the New Zealand Wars.
View of Mt Egmont, Taranaki, New Zealand, taken from New Plymouth, with Maoris driving off settlers’ cattle goes on display next week.
English artist William Strutt painted it in 1861 based on newspaper reports and sketches he made while briefly living in New Zealand five years earlier.
Te Papa chief executive Rick Ellis it’s an important work because there are very few paintings that reflect the historical events unfolding during the period.
It’s one of seven known oil paintings Strutt completed based on New Zealand subjects, and it has been in the hands of an English family since the 1860s.
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