Ans Westra

“In my photography I’m looking for communication between people and the right moment. Catching the right moment in full swing. One that sums up an emotion.”1

In March of this year we lost one of Aotearoa’s most revered pioneers of documentary photography, Anna Jacoba (Ans) Westra. As a nation, her photographic oeuvre is highly significant to us for its historical content.

Ans Westra was 24 when she immigrated to this country in 1957 from Rotterdam, Holland. She settled in Wellington, where she gained work as a photographer with the School Publications Branch of the Department of Education, and Te Ao Hou, a magazine published by the Department of Māori Affairs. Ostensibly, being a foreigner became her artistic edge; she was able to show what was unique about life in Aotearoa from a unique perspective.

Westra was self-taught, and she preferred to use a medium-format, waist-level viewfinder camera. She believed this method was less obtrusive, and allowed for an intimate closeness, something she felt she couldn’t achieve with her eye behind a lens. This shaped what became her own distinctively recognisable, unposed and candid photographic style. This was unconventional approach during the mid-1960s, when staged illustrative compositions were the preferred norm.

Westra had an innate talent as a photographer, with an extraordinary gift for creating arresting images of deep emotion and connection. Her images are powerful in affect because of their pathos, and there is a deep respect present for the people she photographed. However, Westra’s work drew significant controversy for her portrayal of Māori. In 1964 she came under fire for work she had created for a School Bulletin publication, Washday at the Pa. The edition was, controversially, later withdrawn from distribution because it was said to reinforce existing stereotypes of Māori as impoverished.

Typically, Westra photographed everyday people, those not wealthy in material processions, as was the case for the family featured in Washday at the Pa. Westra wanted to show the warmheartedness of an emotionally rich family. These photos were taken over a period of five months, while she lived among the community of rural Māori families; it was her intention to document what everyday life was like from a perspective inside their world. Despite earlier controversy surrounding some of Westra’s work, her images are now considered an important part of the photographic and cultural history of Aotearoa, as is her indisputable legacy as a documentary photographer.

61 Ans Westra, A&P Show Carterton c1959 gelatin silver print 230 × 190mm

EST $2,500 $5,000

62 Ans Westra, untitled (Porirua, Wellington) gelatin silver print 231 × 190mm

EST $2,500 $5,000

63 Ans Westra, Ōpunake, Rātana Hui, Easter, 1965 1965 gelatin silver print signed 280 × 230mm

EST $3,000 $6,000

64 Ans Westra, Tikitiki, East Coast, 1963 1963 gelatin silver print signed, dated and title inscribed 340 × 330mm

EST $2,500 $5,000

70 Terry Stringer, untitled 1981 oil on aluminum signed and dated 400 × 595 × 225mm (widest points)

EST $6,000 $10,000

71 Stephen Bambury, untitled acrylic and 12 karat white gold on aluminium signed 170 × 350mm

EST $6,000 $9,000

72 Paul Dibble, The Innocents

2011 bronze signed and dated 250 × 400 × 200mm (widest points)

EST $10,000 $20,000

73 Terry Stringer, untitled 2009 bronze, 1/20 signed and dated 165 × 180 × 55mm (widest points)

EST $2,000 $4,000

PROVENANCE

The Estate of Ans Westra, Wellington.

74 Martin Selman, untitled carrara marble 300 × 600 × 100mm (widest points)

EST $4,000 $6,000

75 Paul Dibble, untitled bronze 1800 × 950 × 420mm (widest points)

EST $40,000 $60,000

The four works here by Adele Younghusband, Olivia Spencer Bower, Juliet Peter and Toss Woollaston are all works on paper created in the early-to-mid twentieth century. Spencer Bower, Woollaston and Peter were all members of The Group, a collection of artists who reacted against the way the Canterbury Society of Arts catered for popular taste and excluded younger, more innovative painters. Although Younghusband never joined The Group, her work has a similar modern feel.

Adele Younghusband came from an artistic family and her creative talent was evident from an early age; yet when she insisted on learning photography, it was done without her family’s support. She subsequently worked as a photographic retoucher in Hamilton while continuing to paint and draw in her spare time. It was not until her 40s that she made a serious commitment to painting.

Younghusband’s work is characterised by a variety of styles and phases. Painted in 1935, the study of karaka leaves and berries featured here appears to owe much to the early influences of the painting practice of her aunt, Fanny Osborne. Although its treatment may seem conventional when compared to more stylised interpretations Younghusband painted after she studied under George Bell in Melbourne in the late 1930s, her meticulous rendering of this botanical specimen is beautifully refined and surprisingly three-dimensional.

Olivia Spencer Bower’s uncompromising approach and total mastery of the watercolour medium established her as a significant figure in the New Zealand art world during the mid-twentieth century. Her first art teacher, A. T. Coles, insisted on three washes only, all subject-matter being resolved at that stage. Following this, Spencer Bower later said, “with a brush full of paint I had to think before I put it down.” It was the start of a lifetime discipline in the control of watercolour paint.

In 1933 Spencer Bower began exhibiting with The Group, whose initial members were graduates from the Canterbury College School of Art. Membership later expanded to include other artists with modern inclinations. Spencer Bower remained a stalwart member of The Group, exhibiting with them regularly into the 1970s.

Landscapes were a popular subject for The Group; often sparsely rendered, appearing to extend eternally beyond the frame. Members often made excursions to the West Coast and the Mackenzie Country, capturing light as it fell across terrain, breaking scenes down to basic forms and simplified arrangements of colours that celebrated the painting process.

Juliet Peter exhibited with The Group after graduating from the Canterbury College School of Art in the late 1930s. From the rural Canterbury farms on which she grew up and later worked as part of the wartime Women's Land Service, Peter became an astute observer of the essential character of a chosen landscape. As her painting Church, Kaiapoi demonstrates, she was adept at depicting what she saw around her with charming directness and economy. The distinctively crisp, linear style Peter was well known for was honed during her years as a staff artist for the Department of Education, after she moved to Wellington.

A later member of The Group was Toss Woollaston. Regarded as one of the founders of modern art in New Zealand, Woollaston was part of the 1930s generation of artists who strived to establish a unique national culture, clearly distinct from that of Britain. Apart from two terms of study under Robert N. Field at the Dunedin Art School in 1932, Woollaston was essentially self-taught. He chose a unique and independent path throughout his career, remaining largely indifferent to the stylistic trends of late-twentieth century painting.

In his book The Far-Away Hills: A Meditation on New Zealand Landscape (1960), Woollaston acknowledges the influence of artist Flora Scales, who allowed him to study her notes from her training with Hans Hoffman, based on an analysis of Cézanne’s work. Woollaston subsequently adopted what he saw as Cézanne’s methodology of depicting the essence of a specific landscape within a formally constructed composition.

Through his paintings, Woollaston celebrates the physicality of the world as he sees it. Following the example of Cézanne, Woollaston continued to look intently at his favoured landscapes, getting to know them better with each depiction. Working in watercolour enabled him to realise his visions with spontaneous fluidity, transforming the familiar New Zealand landscape into a painted “floating world,” evoking Monet’s late water-lily paintings, which had so impressed Woollaston.