Betty Curnow

{{Short description|New Zealand artist (1911–2005)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2018}}

{{Infobox artist

| name = Betty Curnow

| image =

| caption =

| birth_name = Betty Jamaux Le Cren

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1911|10|31|df=y}}

| birth_place = Timaru, New Zealand

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2005|09|24|1911|10|31|df=y}}

| death_place = Auckland, New Zealand

| nationality =

| residence =

| movement =

| spouse = {{marriage|Allen Curnow|1936|1965|end=div.}}

| awards =

| patrons =

| field = Painting and print making

| training =

| works =

| relatives = Wystan Curnow (son)

}}

Elizabeth Jamaux Curnow née Le Cren (31 October 1911 – 24 September 2005), commonly known as Betty Curnow, was a New Zealand artist and the subject of the iconic Portrait of Betty Curnow by Rita Angus.

Background

Born in Timaru, New Zealand, Curnow was the daughter of Charles John Le Cren and Daisy Le Cren (née Roberts) who was a watercolour artist.{{Cite web|url=http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-PlaNine-t1-body-d1-d716.html|title=LE CREN, Daisy née Roberts 1881–1951 {{!}} NZETC|website=nzetc.victoria.ac.nz|access-date=2019-06-24}} Le Cren was also an early teacher of Colin McCahon who, when she died, gifted her daughter Betty Curnow a set of paintings in commemoration of her mother and her influence on him at a young age.{{Cite web |title=Colin McCahon |url=https://www.aigantighe.co.nz/Collection/blog/colin-mccahon |access-date=9 December 2024 |website=Aigantighe Art Gallery}} Betty married Allen Curnow at St Mary's Church, Timaru, on 26 August 1936.{{Cite news |date=27 August 1936 |title=Weddings |url=https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19360827.2.6.3 |access-date=9 December 2024 |work=The Press (Christchurch) |pages=2}} The Curnows were social and intellectual magnets for the Christchurch art scene in the 1930s and 1940s. As the mother of three children{{Cite web |last=Sturm. |first=Terry |date=2010 |title=Curnow, Thomas Allen Monro - Early life |url=https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/6c1/curnow-thomas-allen-monro |website=Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand}} Betty Curnow's time was limited but she was able to attend the Christchurch School of Art intermittently{{Cite book |title=Modern Women: Flight of Time |publisher=Auckland Art Gallery |year=2025 |isbn=9780864633446 |editor-last=Waite |editor-first=Julia |pages=30–31, 147–148}} studying under A.J. Roe, the first person in New Zealand to use mezzotint, who gave Curnow, primarily a painter at the time, a life-long interest in graphic art.{{Cite web |last=Brownson |first=Ron |date=1979 |title=Artists' portraits & Self Portraits Selected from the Permanent Collection |url=https://cdn.aucklandunlimited.com/artgallery/assets/media/1979-artists-portraits-and-self-portraits-catalogue.pdf |website=Auckland City Art Gallery}} She was also closely involved with the Canterbury Society of Arts and became a close friend and advisor to many significant Christchurch artists including Rita Angus, Leo Bensemann, Douglas MacDiarmid and Evelyn Page.{{Cite web |last=Sleigh |first=Thomasin |title=Neither Here Nor There: The Writing of Wystan Curnow 1961-1984 |url=https://openaccess.wgtn.ac.nz/articles/thesis/Neither_Here_nor_There_The_Writing_of_Wystan_Curnow_1961-1984/17011526/1/files/31466042.pdf |website=Victoria University}} Artist and writer Vita Cochrane has described her as ‘wife, mother and intellectual’ The year after her marriage Betty Curnow became involved in sponsoring the left wing pacifist publication Woman Today. Other supporters included Margaret Anderson (later Margaret Frankel) and Rita Angus. The magazine had reached a circulation of around 2,500 although it folded at the start of the Second World War.{{Cite journal |last=Curnow |first=Betty |date=December 1976 |title=Rita Angus: Impressions by some friends |url=https://art-newzealand.com/3-angusbc/ |journal=Art New Zealand |issue=3 |pages=15}} Christchurch in the late thirties was known as the country's creative centre and the centre of that centre was Leo Bensemann's home at 97 Cambridge Terrace. It served as a meeting place for art activists like Rita Angus who shared the house with Bensemann for some time, along with regular visitors like Betty and Allen Curnow, Olivia Spencer Bower, Louise Henderson and poet Denis Glover.{{Cite book |last=Simpson |first=Peter |title=Rita Angus Life and Vision |publisher=Te Papa Press |year=2008 |isbn=9781877385353 |editor-last=McAloon |editor-first=William |pages=49 |editor-last2=Trevelyn |editor-first2=Jill}} As art historian Peter Simpson has noted, with Angus and Bensemann working in such close proximity their interests began to merge and they repeatedly began to draw and paint not only each other but Lawrence Baigent and the numerous visitors to the studios as well.{{Cite web |last=Vangioni |first=Peter |date=26 May 2015 |title=Rita Angus by Leo Bensemann |url=https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/blog/collection/2015/05/rita-angus-by-leo-bensemann |access-date=9 December 2024}}

The Portrait of Betty Curnow

In 1942 Betty Curnow became the subject of one of Rita Angus's most well-known paintings, Portrait of Betty Curnow.{{Cite web |title=Portrait of Betty Curnow |url=https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/3721/portrait-of-betty-curnow |access-date=10 December 2024}} Angus, who at that time was Rita Cook, and Curnow had become close friends and in 1939 Angus stayed with the Curnows for a time. During the visit Angus began a number of pencil studies of Betty Curnow that developed into the oil painting. Curnow and Angus collaborated on the painting, selecting clothing and objects that best symbolised the threads of Curnow's life as a daughter, wife and mother. They also discussed the portrait as a sign of the strength women were gaining as they took up new jobs and responsibilities as a result of the war.{{Cite book |title=Rita Angus |date=1983 |publisher=National Art Gallery, New Zealand |isbn=0959760725 |pages=86}} Betty Curnow is seen holding a pair of blue pants that belonged to her son Wystan. Himself a prominent poet, art critic, writer and curator, Wystan Curnow remembers Angus living with them and has related how the Mexican-themed jacket worn by his mother in the portrait was fashioned from two aprons purchased at Woolworths and later again converted by Curnow into a bathing suit.{{Cite web |title=Archive Collection Detail |url=https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/archives/38929 |access-date=10 December 2024}} Curnow sits in her grandmother's chair with a photo of her father on the wall behind her.{{Cite web |title=Portrait of Betty Curnow |url=https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/collection/72-65 |access-date=21 October 2017 |website=christchurchartgallery.org.nz}} The two pictures behind Curnow are the print Autumn by Bruegel and a watercolour by Angus which were intended to stand in for the Old World and the New.{{Cite book |title=Rita Angus New Zealand Modernist he Ringatoi Hou o Aotearoa |publisher=Te Papa Press |year=2021 |isbn=978-0-9951338-4-6 |editor-last=Bisley |editor-first=Lizzie |pages=34}} Curnow recalled later that they had seen the Bruegel in an exhibition from the collection of a German refugee who had fled to New Zealand. In the catalogue of Angus's first retrospective art writer and curator Ron Brownson noted of the portrait, ‘Nothing represented is extraneous detail. Betty Curnow is a representative of her generation because she ties the connections between her own past, present and future family by being at its centre. The art historian and gallery director Peter Tomory quite accurately described the painting as, ‘the portrait of a century’.{{Cite web |last=Wolfe |first=Richard |title=Confronting Portraiture |url=https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/bulletin/163/confonting-portraiture |access-date=10 December 2024}} On completing the painting Angus gifted it to the Curnows in thanks for their hospitality and kindness while she had stayed with them.{{Cite web |date=25 May 2015 |title=Nina Tonga One out of the glory box – An itsy bitsy teenie weenie…. |url=https://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2015/05/25/one-out-of-the-glory-box-an-itsy-bitsy-teenie-weenie/ |access-date=10 December 2024}} Angus first exhibited her portrait of Curnow in the 1943 Group Show: Rita Cook catalogue number five, Portrait.{{Cite web |title=The Group 1943 |url=https://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/Publications/Art/TheGroup/pdfs/1943.pdf |access-date=10 December 2024}}

In 1954 another friend painted Curnow's portrait in a very different style. Louise Henderson presented Curnow's ‘French side’ a glamorous alternative to Angus's more austere presentation.{{Cite web |title=Louise Henderson Portrait of Betty Curnow |url=https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/collection/7265/louise-etiennette-sidonie-henderson/portrait-of-betty-curnow |access-date=10 December 2024}} As art writer Serina Bently commented, ‘Henderson’s portrait is stripped back, presenting an exotic and confident cosmopolitan woman with minimal attributes of flower, cigarette and shawl. She is strong, independent, and seductive.{{Cite news |last=Bentley |first=Serena |date=February 15, 2020 |title=The abiding legacy of a daring Parisian modernist who shook up the NZ art world |url=https://thespinoff.co.nz/art/15-02-2020/the-abiding-legacy-of-a-daring-parisian-modernist-who-shook-up-the-nz-art-world |access-date=10 December 2024 |work=The Spinoff }}

Art career and life

In 1950 Curnow and her husband Allen left Christchurch for Auckland’s Takapuna, overlooking Shoal Bay. Encouraged by recently emigrated Dutch printmaker Kees Hos,{{Cite web |title=Kees Hos |url=https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/676236 |access-date=10 December 2024}} Curnow herself was drawn to the medium noting, ‘I like the transparency of it and the clearness of the edge and surfaces. It’s a very disciplined art.’{{Cite news |date=29 August 1964 |title="Artist's Brush" is an Old Mangle |work=The Dominion}} By 1955 Curnow had begun attending night classes in printing and began her first experiments of applying the printing ink directly onto the paper and two years later had her first of many exhibitions using this technique.{{Cite book |last=Cape |first=Peter |title=Prints and Printmakers in New Zealand |date=1974 |publisher=Collins Auckland |pages=67–72}} In true New Zealand do-it-yourself style Curnow used a laundry wringer set up in her dining room to act as a press, the dining room table becoming covered in recently printed images. As Curnow noted, ‘we eat off our laps now.’ {{Cite news |date=18 September 1964 |title=Makes Prints In Dining Room |url=https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19640918.2.19.15 |work=The Press (Christchurch) |pages=2}} With her wide interests in the arts Curnow was able to make a number of connections that proved valuable. She mentioned to her friend the director and producer John O’Shea how much she had enjoyed the play Lest We Resemble by Auckland writer John Graham and observed what a good film it would make. O’Shea picked up on the idea for his second feature Runaway (1962).{{Cite journal |last=Reynolds |first=John Stuart |date=2002 |title=Going Far? John O'Shea's Runaway in the Context of His Attempt to Establish a Feature Film Industry in New Zealand |journal=Thesis Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a PhD Degree in Film, Television and Media Studies, University of Auckland |pages=137}} In 1965 Betty and Allen Curnow's marriage was dissolved. Curnow now focussed on new printing techniques and in 1968 spent time in Wellington working in engraving and aquatint with John Drawbridge. She also spent time in Australia looking at prints and other art forms. although by 1979 she had returned to painting. Betty Curnow died on 24 September 2005 in Auckland.{{Cite web |title=Betty Curnow |url=https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artist/3946/betty-curnow |access-date=9 December 2024}}

Selected exhibitions

1958

  • Betty Curnow Hereford street coffee lounge. The critic J.N.K. said of the work, (June) ‘Betty Curnow…shows herself as a colourist of some talent and individuality in her paintings.’{{Cite news |last=J.N.K. |date=16 June 1958 |title=Betty Curnow's Paintings |url=https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19580616.2.106 |access-date=10 December 2024 |work=The Press (Christchurch) |pages=12}}

1960

  • Hays Limited Art Competition (group). Curnow's son Wystan also exhibited.{{Cite web |title=Hays Prize 1960 |url=https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/media/uploads/2017_11/HaysPrize1960.pdf |access-date=10 December 2024}}

1964

  • The Group 64.{{Cite web |title=The Group 64 |url=https://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/Publications/Art/TheGroup/pdfs/1964.pdf |access-date=11 December 2024}}

1965–1969

  • New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibitions (group).{{Cite web |title=Artist's Exhibitions |url=https://findnzartists.org.nz/en/artists/exhibition/4/ |access-date=10 December 2024}}

1966

  • Hays Limited Art Competition (Hay's Prize) (group).{{Cite web |title=Hays Prize 1966 |url=https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/media/uploads/2017_11/HaysPrize1966.pdf |access-date=10 December 2024}}

1968

  • Canterbury Society of Arts Gallery, Christchurch.{{Cite news |date=16 July 1968 |title=Gallery Busy |url=https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19680716.2.61 |work=The Press (Christchurch) |pages=8}}
  • 50 Prints Central Gallery (group) Wellington.{{Cite news |date=23 October 1968 |title=Resurgence Of Print-Making |url=https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19681023.2.17.8 |work=The Press (Christchurch) |pages=2}}

1974

  • Print Council of New Zealand: Fifth Touring Exhibition. (group) Wairarapa Arts Centre, Masterton (toured).{{Cite web |title=Print Council of New Zealand: Fifth Touring Exhibition |url=https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/exhibitions/print-council-of-new-zealand |access-date=10 December 2024}}

1983

  • Betty Curnow: Paintings Devonport Library, Auckland.{{Cite news |date=16 June 1983 |title=Shore Artist the Subject of Three Portraits |work=North Shore Times Advertiser}}

1984

  • My Country’ South Island Hills: Paintings by Betty Curnow New Vision Gallery, Auckland.{{Cite news |date=13 December 1984 |title=My Country – Nostalgia Trip for Shore Artist |access-date= |work=North Shore Times Advertiser}}

1987

  • Betty Curnow C.S.A. Gallery, Christchurch. Paintings.{{Cite news |date=21 October 1987 |title=Arts diary |work=The Press (Christchurch) |pages=2}}

1993

  • Betty Curnow: Sixty Years Mairangi Arts Centre, Auckland.{{Cite news |date=13 April 1993 |title=Versatile Artist Adds to History |work=North Shore Times Advertiser}}

Collections

Works by Curnow are held in:

[https://collection.aratoi.org.nz/objects/4291/sunrise Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History],

[https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/13931/leaves-2 Auckland Art Gallery]

[https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/collection/200098/betty-curnow/shoal-bay-auckland Christchurch Art Gallery]

[https://searchthecollection.nga.gov.au/artist/32548/betty-curnow National Gallery of Australia]

[https://collection.sarjeant.org.nz/objects/44257/they-hold-him-the-southern-alps Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui]

References

{{reflist|30em}}

Further reading

Artist files for Curnow are held at:

  • [http://findnzartists.org.nz/artists/artist-file/1/ E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki]
  • [http://findnzartists.org.nz/artists/artist-file/2/ Robert and Barbara Stewart Library and Archives, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu]
  • [http://findnzartists.org.nz/artists/artist-file/6/ Fine Arts Library, University of Auckland]
  • [http://findnzartists.org.nz/artists/artist-file/3/ Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena]
  • [http://findnzartists.org.nz/artists/artist-file/4/ Te Aka Matua Research Library, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa]

{{The Group NZ}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Curnow, Betty}}

Category:1911 births

Category:2005 deaths

Category:People from Timaru

Category:20th-century New Zealand painters

Category:People associated with The Group (New Zealand art)

Category:20th-century New Zealand women painters