Described by Hamish Keith in 'The Big Picture' -- his complete history of NZ art that's been shovelled away to a late night Sunday spot on TV One -- as his favourite New Zealand painting, 'Water Spouts' was painted by James Cook's official painter William Hodges (1744-1797) on his second NZ journey, and places man in as precarious a relationship to the landscape as it's possible to imagine. Keith calls it "a moment of change in European landscape painting" when the landscape begins to take over from the figures and palpable danger enters in, presaging the romantic landscapes of the next century.
The New World they were helping to discover inspired in painters like Hodges a very new way of looking at the world itself, and man's place in it. [Picture from the repository of much of Hodges' work, the British Ministry of Defence Art Collection. Hat tip Hard News. Click to enlarge.]
2 comments:
A wonderful painting; as the former Registrar of the Ministry of Defence Art Collection, I think of it as mine own.
And pre-Keith, I knew nothing at all about it. It's a painting I could very easily live with.
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