Jane Garrett was thirteen years old when her family sailed on the Ruahine for New Zealand where her father, the painter Christopher Perkins, took up a post as Art Instructor at the Wellington Technical College in 1929.
Forthright in his opinions, it was inevitable that Perkins should have clashed with the art establishment of the day. He had come, he announced, in search of a "temperate Tahiti" but had found instead "a strip ofVictorian England". Neverthless, the clear Pacific light, the strange New Zealand hills and the Maori people of Rotorua fascinated him, with the result that he did some of his best work in New Zealand.
But "An Artist's Daughter" is not so much a study of a painter as Jane Garrett's own account of a close and somewhat eccentric English family's adventures among the New Zealanders in the depression years.
Her description of the sometimes quaint customs they encountered will raise a wry smile; her warm, humorous and affectionate recollections of their experiences will be read and reread with pleasure by New Zealanders of any generation.

This copy has significant shelf wear including a crease in the back jacket. A book plate with the previous owner's name is stuck to the inside jacket.