Sydney Lough Thompson - At Home and Abroad

Robert McDougall Art Gallery, 1990, Very good condition, small strip at top of cover is faded

A Robert McDougall Art Gallery exhibition organised with the assistance of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand. The history of New Zealand painting in the early part of this century was set against a broad background of expatriation. In the 1890s and early 1900s many young artists left these shores to develop their artistic horizons. For most, travel was a test: for some the experience bore little fruit, but for others like Sydney Lough Thompson the effect was profound. Thompson was born in Oxford, North Canterbury, in 1877, and studied at Canterbury College School of Art and with Petrus van der Velden, before leaving in 1900 for further study in Europe. Over the next seventy years of his working life he spent more than half that time living and painting in France. Thompson had perhaps the unique distinction of being New Zealand's first long term resident artist in that country...