Ellen von Meyern

{{short description|New Zealand painter}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Ellen von Meyern

| image = Ellen von Meyern.jpg

| caption = Ellen von Meyern in her studio circa 1910.

| birth_date = 26 December 1881

| death_date = 1912

}}

Ellen von Meyern (1882-1912) was a New Zealand artist who is remembered for her portraits of Maori people.

Biography

Von Meyern was the daughter of Arthur von Meyern. Around 1895, she moved from Dunedin to Auckland, where she studied portraiture at the Elam School of Art. Her work includes portraits of her sister Blanche, with whom she shared a studio, and of music and theatre celebrities. Examples of her paintings can be seen in the National Museum of New Zealand.{{cite web|url=http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-PlaNine-t1-body-d1-d1228.html|title=VON MEYERN, Ellen d.1912?|publisher=Victoria University of Wellington: Nineteenth Century New Zealand Artists: A Guide & Handbook|accessdate=9 September 2017 |language=}}{{cite book|last=Bell|first=Leonard|title=The Maori in European Art: A Survey of the Representation of the Maori by European Artists from the Time of Captain Cook to the Present Day|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mEoYAQAAMAAJ|year=1980|publisher=REED|page=116|isbn=978-0-589-01281-6}} Von Meyern's Maori paintings are, like many by Gottfried Lindauer and Frances Hodgkins, associated with symbolist portraits of demure females with or without a child.{{cite book|author=Leonard Bell|title=Colonial Constructs: European Images of the Maori, 1840-1914|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2DdeAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT367|date=1 October 2013|publisher=Auckland University Press|isbn=978-1-86940-640-0|pages=367–}}

Her portrait of Prime Minister Richard Seddon is in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.{{Cite news|url=https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/1536/portrait-of-richard-john-seddon|title=Portrait of Richard John Seddon|work=Auckland Art Gallery|access-date=2017-09-10|language=en}}

She died in October 1912.{{Cite web |title=Miss Ellen Von Meyern {{!}} Collections Online - Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa |url=https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/agent/5739 |access-date=2024-12-05 |website=collections.tepapa.govt.nz}}

Gallery

File:Maori Maiden - Ellen Von Meyern 1901.jpg|Maiden

File:Portrait of Richard John Seddon 1907 by EVM.jpg|Richard Seddon

File:Ellen von Meyern - Maori women and children cooking at Geothermal Hangi Pit.jpg|Maori women and children cooking at Geothermal Hangi Pit

File:Day Dreams - Ellen Von Meyern 1908.jpg|Day Dreams

References

{{Reflist}}