ID: 700001845 Page link: http://vocab.getty.edu/page/cona/700001845	Record Type: Movable Work
Images: 1

Little schoolboy of Bonmahon (oil painting (visual work); Edith Collier (New Zealand artist, 1885-1964); ca. 1915; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Wellington, Welling...; registration number: 1957-0004-3)

Note: This painting was produced during Edith Collier’s stay in the southern Irish fishing village of Bonmahon in 1915. She spent eight or nine months there, attending the summer school run by Australian post-impressionist painter and printmaker Margaret Preston and her artist companion Gladys Reynell. On an earlier visit to Bonmahon in 1914, Collier painted pictures of cottages and landscape. During her second stay, she concentrated on drawing and painting the inhabitants of the village, producing many portrait studies. Her favourite models were older subjects.Little schoolboy of Bonmahon was inspired by advice from Collier’s mother, Eliza: ‘Your charcoal head of an Irish peasant has arrived … Although not a great beauty by nature, it is a face that has seen hardships and poverty that you have brought out to perfection. I would like to see some of the Irish children now, beautiful and happy for a contrast.' It is a brooding, sensitive rather than happy child who is captured here, glancing over his left shoulder. Thoughtful innocence is superbly encapsulated: Collier serves up the delicate, sweet flavour of childhood without its sentimentality. Her palette range is largely muted and subtle, but the dazzling pale and rose pink of the child’s face is arresting. Preston had introduced Collier to the conventions of post-impressionism, and they are here in the use of black outline, simplified tonal modulation and boldness of form. The patterned wallpaper with its blooming reds gives a decorative quality that enhances the pictorial flatness.The same model was used in Collier’s charcoal drawing An Irish schoolboy, c.1915 (Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui), and inspired the later Boy with Noah’s Ark, c.1916-17 (Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui). Children regularly sat for Collier, Preston and Reynell at their studio at 2 Osborne Terrace, Bonmahon, and were paid and given clothing parcels in return. ‘These people are consumptives,’ Preston wrote to Collier’s mother. ‘A lot of your clothes went to cover their nakedness. We tried to give [them] to the orphans.’ Sitting for Collier and her colleagues was an honour amongst the youth of the village.

Titles:

Little schoolboy of Bonmahon (preferred,C,U,RP,English,U,U)

Catalog Level: item

Work Types:

oil painting (visual work) [300033799] (preferred)

..... (Objects Facet, Visual and Verbal Communication (hierarchy name), Visual Works (hierarchy name), visual works (works), <visual works by material or technique>, paintings (visual works), <paintings by material or technique>)

Classifications:

paintings (preferred)

Creation Date: ca. 1915

Creator Display:

Edith Collier (New Zealand artist, 1885-1964) [preferred,VP]

artist Collier, Edith Marion (New Zealand artist, 1885-1964) [500131728]

Locations:

Current: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand) [500311561] Corporate Bodies (Corp. Body)

Repository Numbers: registration number: 1957-0004-3

Credit Line: Gift of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, 1957

Display Materials: oil on canvas

	oil paint (paint) [300015050]
	.......(Materials Facet, Materials (hierarchy name), materials (substances), <materials by function>, coating (material), <coating by form>, paint (coating), <paint by composition or origin>)

	canvas (textile material) [300014078]
	.......(Materials Facet, Materials (hierarchy name), materials (substances), <materials by form>, <materials by physical form>, <fiber and fiber by product>, <fiber by product>, textile materials, <textile materials by process or technique>)

Dimensions: Sight: 496 x 395 mm; Frame: 623 x 520 x 52 mm

General Subject:

portraits (preferred)

Specific Subjects:

	child (people by age group) [300025945]
	.....(Agents Facet, People (hierarchy name), people (agents), <people by age group>, youth (people)) (AAT)

	boy [300247598]
	.....(Agents Facet, People (hierarchy name), people (agents), <people by gender or sex>) (AAT)

List/Hierarchical Position:

..... Movable Works

.......... Movable Works by class: drawings, paintings, prints, other two-dimensional media

Sources and Contributors:
Little schoolboy of Bonmahon	........ [VP]
	........ Te Papa online (2000-) http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/ObjectDetails.aspx?oid=37569; accessed 22 August 2012

Subject: ....... [VP]

....................... Te Papa online (2000-) accessed 22 August 2012

Note:
English	..... [VP]
	..... Te Papa online (2000-) accessed 22 August 2012