Joanne Drayton has a doctorate from the University of Canterbury, has published papers on art history and theory, and lectured and taught since 1981. She's currently an Associate Professor in the Unitec Department of Design in Auckland. Her publications include Edith Collier (1999), Rhona Haszard (2002) and Frances Hodgkins (2005). She was awarded a National Library Fellowship to research and write her biography of Ngaio Marsh (2008).
Edith Collier: Her life and work 1885-1964
Edith Collier's contribution to New Zealand art as an innovator, modernist and expatriate painter placed her in a most distinguished group, but her achievements have been eclipsed by the very company she kept - such as Frances Hodgkins and Margaret Preston. This book - and the travelling exhibition it accompanies - sets the record straight.
After a thorough although conservative art education at the Technical School in Wanganui, Edith Collier left New Zealand in 1913 for St John's Wood Art School in London. She was then aged 27. Rapidly disillusioned, and feeling marginalised as an expatriate woman painter, she became more influenced by other expatriates in London, and was to enjoy greater success through exhibiting with the Society of Women Artists and Women's International Art Club - venues outside the art establishment - and became a significant Modernist painter.
Collier returned to New Zealand in 1922 as an experienced artist with innovative ideas, but as a spinster in provincial Wanganui received harsh treatment, including what Drayton describes as savage, critical assessment and negative response from her own community. In a well-known incident (on which Drayton casts a new perspective) her father burned many of her finest paintings. She died in 1964.
Rhona Haszard: An experimental expatriate New Zealand artist
During Rhona Haszard's short life she distinguished herself as a "New Woman" whose social and sexual behaviour was highly controversial. She worked as an artist on the Channel Island of Sark, in France, Alexandria and London. She dressed eccentrically, recommended Radclyffe Hall's lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness, spoke positively of de facto relationships and advocated vegetarianism and unprocessed food. Most significantly, she wanted to paint innovatively and professionally.
Born in Thames in 1901, Haszard studied at Canterbury College School of Art and worked with fellow students Ngaio Marsh, Evelyn Page, Rata Lovell-Smith and Olivia Spencer Bower. Even in this talented company she established a promising reputation. A successful future seemed assured by her marriage in 1922 to Ronald McKenzie, but her traumatic elopement with Englishman Leslie Greener seemed to threaten it all. Escaping with Greener to France in the 1920s, her brighter, Post-Impressionist style rapidly brought international recognition, and in London she participated in a number of significant exhibitions. Her life was tragically cut short at the age of thirty.
Frances Hodgkins: A Private Viewing
The life of Frances Hodgkins was full of adventure, involving both physical and artistic journeys in which she crossed hemispheres, cultures, epochs and styles. She took huge risks, had intense focus and exhibited enormous vitality. An encourager of young artists, she attracted ardent, unstinting support herself, yet she also suffered hurtful dismissals. Hodgkins worked with and was highly regarded by such well-known artists as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ben and Winifred Nicholson - and she became a leading figure of twentieth century British Modernism. She is one of the most internationally significant New Zealand-born artists to date. In Frances Hodgkins: A Private Viewing, art historian Dr Joanne Drayton captures Hodgkins's life vividly, drawing on the artist's extensive correspondence with close friends and family on the other side of the world. She critiques individual works (many shown here in full colour) and surveys Hodgkins's entire career, displaying her unique achievements in their proper international context. The result is a beautiful, compelling and highly readable book that is indeed a private viewing: it offers a sense of immediacy and intimacy and yet also the first comprehensive exploration of Frances Hodgkins.
Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime
One of the celebrated 1930s and 40s "Queens of Crime′ Ngaio Marsh was probably our first million copy author. Her tightly written‚ stylish whodunits were perennial favorites‚ rating alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers. She was also seriously in love with the theatre‚ and her triumphant return to New Zealand to establish the Court Theatre in Christchurch saw her feted and honored with the title dame of the British Empire. With her coterie of ′luvvies′ the handsome gay boys who were a part of her entourage and her protégés in many fields of the arts‚ and her impeccable landed gentry upbringing‚ Dame Ngaio dominated the News Zealand performing arts scene for many years before her death. A biography was produced to no great acclaim‚ and it was a tedious hagiography of Dame Ngaio the woman of stature. Dr Jo Drayton‚ award winning art historian and writer was awarded the Alexander Turnbull fellowship for 2007 and has used the time to complete the research and writing of this her most exciting book to date. There was another story to be told‚ a much more textured‚ rich and fascinating story‚ of a young woman of ambiguous sexuality who reveled in the abandon of the Bohemian Riviera‚ whose spurned suitor committed suicide and whose scintillating murder mysteries all took their inspiration‚ setting or characters from the heady life she enjoyed as a member of the in set in England‚ where one moved between town house and country estate. In what will be one of the most read and most significant biographies of 2008‚ Ngaio Marsh comes to life and finally steps out from behind the cardboard cutout of respectability and decorum.