Walter Armiger Bowring

{{short description|New Zealand artist, cartoonist and illustrator}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Walter Armiger Bowring

| image = Walter Armiger Bowring in studio circa 1920.jpg

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| caption = Bowring, {{circa|1920}}

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| birth_date = {{Birth date|1874|03|11|df=y}}

| birth_place = Auckland, New Zealand

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1931|11|3|1874|03|11|df=y}}

| death_place = Sydney, Australia

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| occupation = {{Hlist|Painter|caricaturist}}

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| spouse = {{marriage|Violet Bowring|1925||}}

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Walter Armiger Bowring (11 March 1874 – 3 November 1931) was a New Zealand portrait and landscape painter, illustrator, cartoonist and caricaturist, also successful in London and Australia.{{Cite web |title=Bowring, Walter Armiger 1874-1931 |url=https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ethesaurus.92616 |access-date=21 August 2023 |website=Alexander Turnbull Library |archive-date=11 August 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190811091644/https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ethesaurus.92616 |url-status=live }} He was an unofficial World War I artist and a collection of his early work is contained in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. He entered 14 portraits in Sydney's Archibald Prize from 1925. His subjects included public figures, such as politicians, Governors-General, military men and academics: Richard John Seddon, William Ferguson Massey, Harold Beauchamp, William Rolleston, William Sefton Moorhouse, the Earl of Ranfurly, Lord Mountbatten, Viscount Hawkesbury, Lord Jellicoe, Bernard Freyberg, and a number of prominent women. A number of his World War I works are included in the National Collection of War Art in Archives New Zealand, a collection merged in the 1950s with works from World War II;{{Cite web |title=Walter Bowring |url=https://nzhistory.govt.nz/keyword/walter-bowring |access-date=23 August 2023 |website=NZ History}} and three portraits are in the National Portrait Gallery of Australia.{{Cite web |title=W.A. Bowring |url=https://www.portrait.gov.au/portraits.php?i=both&p=1109 |access-date=4 August 2023 |website=National Portrait Gallery of Australia}}

Early life

Walter Bowring was born in Auckland, one of 12 children of Alfred and Elizabeth Bowring. His parents had arrived in New Zealand in 1856 on the Gipsey and his father had a piano warehouse in Symonds Street, Auckland.{{Cite news |first= |date=10 February 1923 |title=Social and Personal Items. Matters of Interest from Far and Near |volume=16 |pages=14 |work=Dominion |issue=124 |url=https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19230210.2.85.1 |access-date=8 August 2023 |via=Papers Past}}{{Cite web |first= |title=White Wings Vol.II. Founding of the Provinces and Old-Time shipping. Passenger ships from 1840-1885. The Gipsey |url=https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Bre02Whit-t1-body-d2-d6-d18.html |access-date=11 August 2023 |website=Victoria University of Wellington Library NZ Electronic Text Collection}}

Bowring was educated at Auckland Grammar. In 1901 he married Millicent McOwen and had one son and one daughter. They divorced in 1925.{{Cite web |title=Bowring, Walter v Bowring, Maria Millicent |url=https://collections.archives.govt.nz/en/web/arena/search#/entity/aims-archive/R26116396 |access-date=15 August 2023 |website=Archives NZ}}

Career

File:Departure of the Hospital Ship "Maheno", 1915 (28086044121).jpg

Bowring's early works were black and white sketches for New Zealand Observer.{{Cite web |title=Bowring, Walter Armiger 1874-1931 |url=https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ethesaurus.92616 |access-date=23 August 2023 |website=National Library of New Zealand |archive-date=11 August 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190811091644/https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ethesaurus.92616 |url-status=live }} He then became a cartoonist for the Spectator (Christchurch) and the Weekly Press.{{Cite web |title=Nineteenth Century New Zealand Artists: A Guide & Handbook |url=https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-PlaNine-t1-body-d1-d155.html |access-date=18 August 2023 |website=Victoria University of Wellington}} He was represented in the New Zealand International Exhibition of 1906, the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in 1894 and 1898 and exhibited nationally in New Zealand up until 1925 when he moved to Sydney.{{Cite web |title=Bowring, Walter Armiger |url=https://findnzartists.org.nz/en/artist/1690/walter-armiger-bowring |access-date=14 August 2023 |website=Find New Zealand Artists: a database of artist names}}{{Cite web |title=Nineteenth Century New Zealand Artists: A Guide & Handbook - Bowring, Walter Armiger R.B.A. 1874-1931 |url=https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-PlaNine-t1-body-d1-d155.html |access-date=19 August 2023 |website=Victoria University of Wellington}} In December 1899, some of his work was reproduced in the New Zealand Illustrated magazine and in 1905 he went to London and studied under William Orpen and Augustus John.

File:The Homecoming from Gallipoli.jpg

In 1918 he applied to become an official war artist for New Zealand. However, the Government preferred to appoint those already serving with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, or living overseas.{{Cite web |title=The Homecoming from Gallipoli by Walter Bowring |url=https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/homecoming-from-gallipoli |access-date=3 August 2023 |website=NZ History}} Instead, he captured the aftermath of war on the home front.

Works by Bowring featured in an exhibition of World War I and II paintings by New Zealand artists compiled by the National Art Gallery, Wellington in 1952.{{Cite web |title=Exhibition of Official War painting by New Zealand Artists held 24 June to 3 August 1952 |url=https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22861035?search%5Bi%5D%5Bcreator%5D=National+Art+Gallery+%28N.Z.%29&search%5Bpath%5D=items&search%5Btext%5D=walter+armiger+bowring |access-date=23 August 2023 |website=National Gallery Wellington |archive-date=23 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230823032332/https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22861035?search%5Bi%5D%5Bcreator%5D=National+Art+Gallery+%28N.Z.%29&search%5Bpath%5D=items&search%5Btext%5D=walter+armiger+bowring |url-status=live }} Among his notable paintings are The Departure of HNZT 13 SS Verdela and 14 RMS Willochra from Lyttelton on December 5, 1914, The hospital ship Maheno (1915), and the poignant Homecoming from Gallipoli, painted in 1916. He also had a cartoon in the Free Lance 1915 of The Maoris at Gallipoli.{{citation needed|date=August 2023}}

On a visit to England in 1921-24 he was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and the Chelsea Arts Club and exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London.{{citation needed|date=August 2023}} He was a contributor to London Punch and other English journals. Walter Bowring was vice-president of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts for eight years, resigning in 1925, when he moved to Sydney with his second wife, and fellow artist, Violet Nelson.{{Cite journal |last=Douglas |first=Barbara |date=1979 |title=Violet Bowring (1890–1980): Noted portrait painter |journal=Biblionews and Australian Notes and Queries |volume=4 |issue=4 |pages=84–87}} He exhibited with the Royal Art Society of New South Wales from 1926.

Fourteen of Bowring's portraits were entered in the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Archibald Prize between 1925 and 1931.{{Cite web |title=W.A. Bowring 1874-1931 |url=https://www.portrait.gov.au/people/walter-armiger-bowring-1874 |access-date=21 August 2023 |website=National Portrait Gallery}} Two of these were a self-portrait and a portrait of his wife Violet Bowring in 1925.{{Cite web |title=Archibald Prize 1925 |url=https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/archibald/1925 |access-date=14 August 2023 |website=Art Gallery of NSW |archive-date=5 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230805004212/https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/archibald/1925/ |url-status=live }} The Archibald Prize is an annual prize in an open competition for the best portrait, usually a prominent person in the field of art, letters, politics or science by an Australasian resident. The trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW judge the prize.{{Cite web |title=Archibald Prize |url=https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/art/prizes/archibald/ |access-date=20 August 2023 |website=Portrait Gallery NSW |archive-date=4 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230804081614/https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/art/prizes/archibald/ |url-status=live }} The National Portrait Gallery of Australia holds his portraits of Geoffrey Evan Fairfax and James Fairfax of the newspaper dynasty, painted in 1929, and one of the mining engineer James Robert Millar Robertson.

Walter Bowring died in Sydney on 3 November 1931 aged 57.{{Cite news |first= |date=6 November 1931 |title=Mr W. A. Bowring |pages=13 |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/28038397?searchTerm=Walter%20Bowring |url-status=live |access-date=14 August 2023 |via=Trove |archive-date=19 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230819020916/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/28038397?searchTerm=Walter%20Bowring }}