A large (48 by 71 cm) watercolour A Settler and Her Daughter with Maoris at Wanganui, with Mount Ruapehe Beyond by the trans-Tasman artist has come to light in the UK and will be included in the much heralded Australian travel auction being held by Christie's in London on September 25.
The painting has particular relevance for collectors on the other side of the pond as it shows the hills in which the artist's family was massacred.
But Gilfillan also deserves to have a following in Australia and several of his recorded Australian paintings are still whereabouts unknown.
In her extensive entry on the artist in the Dictionary of Australian Artists Joan Kerr nominates A Portrait of Alfred Stephen among the missing while Melbourne art dealer Bridget McDonnell has found records of A View of Melbourne from the South Bank of the Yarra being exhibited in Melbourne by a Miss Mary A Gilbert.
This Melbourne view in particular could be very desirable if it were ever to come to light again.A Scot, Gilfillan emigrated to New Zealand in 1851.
He was allocated 110 acres in the Matarawa valley under the auspices of the NZ company and for two years lived quietly and uneventfully.
In April, 1847, after a misunderstanding between Maoris and a young midshipman from a visiting gunboat, a group of Maoris attacked the Gilfillan farm and killed four of the children and Mrs Gilfillan and seriously wounded Gilfillan and a teenage daughter.
Months later when they were fit to travel, Gilfillan and his three surviving children sailed for Australia where he painted portraits and Interior of a native village, or Pa in New Zealand.
The picture of the Pa was sent to Britain for the Great Exhibition of 1851 but was destroyed during another conflict, during its loan to France when the Franco-Prussian War took place.
Although it shows Gilfillan's own family's "death valley” and therefore has an air of morbidity, Christie's offering appears to be considered sufficiently proficient and of national interest to generate excitement in New Zealand where the market has been hidebound by the contemporary (like most other markets) for lack of such early examples.
Wanganui, North Island, New Zealand was a young settlement when Gilfillan painted it in the late 1840s.
In the watercolour's foreground a group of Maori meet with a settler and her child, possibly the artists wife and daughter.
Christie's emphasis the early interplay of two cultures on the frontiers of European settlement in its cataloguing of the item.
Its cataloguer points out that there are other early views of Wanganui, taken from the south bank of the river, most notable amongst which John Alexander Gilfillan’s View of Wanganui, 1847 in the Dixson Library, State Library of NSW..
The estimates appear to be teasingly low at £30,000 to £50,000. ($A51,000 to $A85,000 at date of preparation of catalogue. .
The work unfortunately comes with no other provenance than "Private, UK.”
This is in stark contrast to another NZ work estimated at £200,000-300,000 ($A340,000-$A510,000) which has also come to light in the UK and will be in the same auction.
This is a portrait of a Maori chief by the perennial NZ colonial favourite Charles Goldie.
While the vendor of the oil An Aristocrat Atama Paparangi, A Chieftain of the Rarawa Tribe of Maorise NZ is listed in the catalogue as “The Property of a Trust”, the portrait, signed and dated Goldie. N.Z. / 1933’ had belonged to Charles Bathhurst, 1st Viscount Bledisloe (1867-1958), Governor General of New Zealand, 1930-1935, and thence by descent..
The Bledisloe Cup is a keenly contested Rugby Union event between Australia and New Zealand in which Australia recently has had a very frail history of play..
These two paintings will make the coming Christie's sale a NZ as well as an Australian event although conceived and timed for the exhibition Australia to be held at the Royal Academy September 21 to December 8.
In the same sale, the Talbots of Malahide, an old Tasmanian family, are seeking to sell a work which has long been on loan by them to the National Gallery of Scotland.
This is John Glover's Ben Lomond from Mr Talbot's property – Four Men Catching Opossums at an estimate of £1.8 million to £2.5 million.
It might be a good buy for an overseas collector even at this swashbuckling estimates because a work of this stature is unlikely to be let out of Australia again.
