Sam (Samuel Frederick David) Cairncross (1913 - 1976)

was born in Marton and began to paint seriously when he started evening classes in life drawing at Wellington Technical College at the age of 30.

In 1946 a solo exhibition of his work attracted the attention of the French Minister to New Zealand and, in the following year, Cairncross was awarded a scholarship by the French Government, enabling him to study at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. He was a pupil of painter, sculptor and art writer Andre Lhote, and met Georges Braque, Henry Moore and Sir Jacob Epstein while he was abroad, visiting London and New York on his way back from Europe in 1948. After his return he worked part-time teaching adult art classes in Wellington, where he lived until his death.

Cairncross kept in touch with contemporary trends such as post-impressionism, and was known for his realist modern paintings, using vigorous full-brush work and bright colours, painting the environment around him and being known particularly for his street scenes of Wellington in the 1950s and 1960s.

This painting is an expressionist response to the dramatic beauty of the bay. Remarkable for its painterly qualities, its surface is animated by by the shifting textures of brush strokes which define different elements of the landscape. The foreground is treated with a gestural freedom and energy which differentiates it from the modelling of the mountain. The drama of the setting is heightened by a complex interplay of dark and light colours which also serves to tonally unify the work.

He is represented at the Anderson Park Art Gallery, Invercargill, Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, Hocken Library, Dunedin, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, Rotorua Museum of Art and History, Rotorua, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, and Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

("The Concise Dictionary of New Zealand Artists, Painters, Printmakers, Sculptors" by Kate McGahey, etc.)
 
Clearly signed at lower right.

Professionally framed.

Size:
Frame = 570 mm wide x 495 mm high
Image = 450 mm wide x 375 mm high