Angels and Aristocrats

Angels and Aristocrats

When you enter the lower galleries of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, until the end of June, you will not be able to avoid the withering stare of “Charlotte Countess Talbot”, whose eyes follow you around the room. This large piece by Thomas Gainsborough and John Hoppner takes centre stage in the opening gallery of the exhibition and is one example of the fine pieces that make up the large national exhibition being currently showcased. The collection contains various elements including children, animals, royalty and sculpture (“Bust of a Lady” may be of particular interest to some!) and ultimately traces early European art in New Zealand collections. The pieces range from the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries and Dunedin is lucky to be the first gallery in the country to host the exhibition. Angels and Aristocrats has been a long time in the making, and being such a sizeable group of collected works it occupies the majority of the ground floor galleries. The exhibition was assembled with the collaboration of Auckland Art Gallery and sees these works assembled together for the very first time.

The exhibition has a companion in the form of a book, bearing the same title and penned by Mary Kisler, an art historian and a senior curator of the Mackelvie Collection at the Auckland Art Gallery. Dunedin curator Aaron Kreisler spoke about the origins of the exhibition, explaining that “the works, and in particular number eight in the exhibition, generated the book which has led to the show.” Because of this, the book is intended to be a visual aid to the exhibition itself, both complementing and deepening the audience’s understanding of the European sensibilities found in the collection, therefore it would be of benefit to anybody particularly taken with the exhibition to also consult the accompanying book. The exhibition itself follows suit from its literary predecessor and is displayed within the same genre groupings of religion, history, landscape and portraiture. The book’s author, Kisler, felt that the richness of these works scattered throughout New Zealand collections had been lost, and the aim of her book is to re-establish these works back to their former place as a significant piece of our national history.

– Taryn Dryfhout
This article first appeared in Issue 11, 2012.
Posted 7:08pm Sunday 13th May 2012 by Taryn Dryfhout.