5
ADELE YOUNGHUSBAND - Still Life with Candle and Vase of Flowers
Estimate:
$8,000 - $12,000
Sold
$20,500
Live Auction
The Silich Collection Part 1
Size
49.5 x 36.6
Description
Oil on board with a study verso (see other images)
Signature
Signed & dated 1951
Provenance
John Leech Gallery, 1985
The Tim & Sherrah Francis Collection, Art+Object, 07/09/2016
Literature
Described by some as a New Zealand
surrealist, Adele Younghusband was a
highly spiritual woman who painted one
mural for Hamilton’s Anglican Chapel of St
Anne, another for the Theosophical Society
Building, and a much-loved depiction of
Tane, God of the Forests for Mahinerangi at
Turangawaewae in Ngāruawāhia.
Her mother’s family came from Great Barrier
Island – a sister was botanical artist Fanny
Osborne - but Adela Mary Roche was born
at Ngaroto in the Waikato where Hungerford
Roche (1841-1914), her Dublin-born father,
was the first Pākehā to farm. Learning her
trade of photographic retouching from
pictorialist Harry Gaze (1874-1953) in
Hamilton, she studied painting with Horace
Moore-Jones (1868-1922) before marrying
Gisborne grocer Frank Younghusband in
1905 and bearing him three children.
Unmistakeably modern in her outlook, she
divorced her husband in 1917 and moved to
Whangārei to open her own photographic
business, becoming famous there as the first
woman to bob her hair. Daughter Joyce’s
death precipitated a move to Dargaville in
1927, but by 1930 she had returned to city life,
opening a photographic studio in Devonport
before returning to Hamilton in 1934 where
she set up the Waikato Society of Arts. After
studying with George Bell in Melbourne in
1937, she exhibited her paintings and prints
there and in Sydney before returning to New
Zealand.
Other Adele Younghusband works are held
by the Auckland Art Gallery, Te Papa, the
National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery
of New South Wales, Rotorua Museum of
Art and History, Auckland War Memorial
Museum, the Dowse and the Manawatu Art
Gallery, with the largest collection of works
being the gift she made to the Whangarei Art
Museum in 1964, five years before her death.
LINDA TYLER