Private Collection, Auckland Provenance: John Leech Gallery solo MacDiarmid exhibition, 23 March -9 April 1971

This is a view from a window of Douglas’ flat, a couple of cheap rooms at 17 rue de Rambouillet in the Bercy district of Paris that was home from mid-1963 to 1968. It was a rather dingy, unfashionable area where people lived out of necessity rather than by choice.
His description when this painting was purchased at a 1971 exhibition of surrounding neighbours being very poor and cooking over a primus with a flame is very much a page of his life and explains what motivated Douglas to paint this scene by night.
“A dark painting with the glow of cooking” Exactly! Douglas would have been captivated by the dancing play of light from these naked cooking flames, casting a soft yellow and blue luminescence outwards over the walls and windows of an otherwise grey outlook. He always had a bent for finding the visual magic of everyday scenes.
After a run of temporary addresses, in May 1963, Douglas wrote excitedly to his parents, Mary and Gordon MacDiarmid, of Auckland, describing his new rue de Rambouillet flat: “At last I have a place in my own name, for affordable key money, not sub-let or hideously unchangeably furnished. On the 4th floor, no lift, and no one above me, I can put trunks in the loft. In a house surrounded by other houses so less noise, instead of being at the end of a line of the underground, I have three different [train] lines within very reasonable distance. The lease includes a cellar, damp and dirty, a chimney in one room and a nice black marble fireplace. … I have to install heating, shower, gas cooker, cupboards, tables, chairs and one fine day, carpets if I can run to that. But all this can at last be to my taste – shall paint the whole place as I want and it is definitely able to be made attractive. The rooms, though small, are strung in a straight line, so can get a long enough view of pictures from one end to another, in fact more than many an actual studio.
“The street is just behind the Gare de Lyon, not the smoky part happily. The whole year’s rent comes to what I paid for the horrible Levallois each month. Unheard of luck. Truly this is better than buying a place. It is the rebirth of freedom as far as I’m concerned for from here I can get odd jobs when required and I should get by even if things go very badly indeed now. And if they work well, I’ll keep it on and make it more perfect, and buy a barn house in the country to spend most of the time in, and have enough physical space. This is dreaming but the flat is not, and quite a nightmare of work and workmen etc before I’m actually into it …”
He sent his parents a floor plan: well-lit workroom, bed-living room, small dining room at entrance, kitchen with shower. A shared lavatory on the landing with one other flat. “As you can see this is tiny but after these months of unsettlement it also looks like heaven.” It was months before he could move in but this was the beginning of a new period of stability. His work was attracting favourable attention, more offers of shows were coming his way, and he knew he was painting well.
When this painting was made in 1967, Douglas was working from two studios – a room of his flat, and a country barn he regularly retreated to at Chalautre-la-Reposte, a small village about an hour out of the city, usually putting in 12-13 hour days, seven days a week. He was also teaching a group of art students in Paris to make ends meet. Although his work was admired and applauded early, it was decades before this translated into money in the bank.
The line drawing of the same window view by day was the cover image Douglas used on his end-of-year cards to family and friends around the world in 1967. He told a friend… “This is what I see from one side of my flat [17, rue de Rambouillet, Paris XII] when the clouds and black smoke of Paris clear a little.”
During March/April 1967, Douglas visited New Zealand, via Samoa, to deliver a series of public lectures on French contemporary art to communities from Invercargill to Whangarei. He helped his parents move from semi-retirement in their seaside cottage at Piha back to urban life at Takapuna, as they were becoming too elderly and isolated to remain at the beach; at 78, Gordon had decided it was time fully retire from the rapidly changing medical profession before it left him behind. Before he left, Douglas hosted the opening of a one-man show of 30 recent paintings at John Leech Gallery, Auckland. He returned to France via Hong Kong, Japan and Lebanon.
Night Window I 1967 came to New Zealand with Douglas for his next solo show at John Leech’s Lorne Street gallery, Auckland from March 23 – April 9 1971, listed in the catalogue as No 4, $200.
This exhibition was savaged by local art critics as ‘Stagey decoration’ (Hamish Keith) and ‘Trying it On Down in New Zealand’…obviously “anything goes” (T.J. McNamara), which infuriated Douglas. He wrote a scathing Letter to the Editor of the ‘New Zealand Herald’ that simply made matters worse.
However, the general media were much more enthusiastic. Eloquent, interesting and living elsewhere, Douglas and his colourful paintings were popular news…the equivalent of a local media star! The July 19, 1971 edition of New Zealand Woman’s Weekly ran a four-page feature on MacDiarmid the expatriate artist, illustrated with paintings including Night Window
Anna Cahill Biographer | Colours of a Life: The life and times of Douglas MacDiarmid (2018), and Letters to Lilburn – Douglas MacDiarmid’s conversations from the heart (November 2022) Director | MacDiarmid Arts Trust