More than Fifty Shades of Grey

‘None of the greatest painters were eccentric in their work’, the (great) English landscape painter John Constable once proclaimed. ‘They were too consistent with themselves to merit such an epithet; too sensible of what they were about.’ Helen Brown (1917–1986) was an eccentric New Zealand painter. She painted landscapes, but did not follow the most progressive stylistic approaches of her era, and her focus was primarily on the unfashionable beauty (in terms of art, anyway) of Auckland’s harbours and the Hauraki Gulf. In keeping with her palette, she was a kind of ‘grey character’ of New Zealand art, neither overtly celebrated nor denigrated. In a 1967 review under the telling heading ‘Uncertain feeling apparent in Helen Brown’s paintings’, Gordon H. Brown suggested that she was of ‘historical interest’ in the context of post-World War II New Zealand painting, but added that this interest ‘has not carried over into the present’. Michael Dunn concludes that Brown ‘did not make any radical departures either stylistically or thematically’. Yet it is precisely the fact that Brown was, in Constable’s terms, not consistent with herself that makes her an interesting painter. For much of her career she was caught between her enthusiasm for aspects of European modernism and the lure of certain kinds of subjects, notably tranquil, expansive, watery ones. If the results were not spectacular or ground-breaking (how many New Zealand artists of the period could claim to have achieved that?), there are nonetheless pictures that stand out as personal, satisfying and, sometimes, pleasantly odd.

Brown’s initial inspiration, and encounter with modernism, came (c.1944), typical of the period during which she exhibited with the Rutland Group. The Rutland Group was established in 1935 by Elam director A.J.C. (Archie) Fisher to foster higher standards and a more critical culture amongst Elam graduates. He wanted to see more than just ‘pretty pictures’ at the Group’s annual Auckland City Art Gallery exhibitions, and encouraged ‘a higher standard of draughtsmanship’. Brown’s contributions, like , tended to home in on the built-up, closed-in spaces of inner-city Auckland, quite the opposite of the spacious, airy expanses of water and sky for which she would later become known. While, in a review of the 1940 Rutland Group exhibition, Brown’s contributions were commended for their ‘rich and dramatic design’, a review of one of her solo shows 25 years later described paintings that were ‘more like mirages than actual images’. However, the artist’s ability to generate feeling and modulate tone within a restricted colour range was remarked upon from the outset. In 1944, A.R.D. Fairburn wrote, in his inimitable style: ‘I admire the way in which Miss Brown despises pretty colour, and uses a combination of dull shades to produce a genuine richness. She is very free with her brush and broad in her style―an excellent thing in a woman. ’