Arrowtown Gallery manager Simon Beadle admires the large
original oil on board landscape by the late Wakatipu artist
Douglas Badcock, which he discovered by chance and
restored. Photo by James Beech.
A backdrop to a Women's Institute flower show in
Arrowtown almost 50 years ago and forgotten since 1976, was
discovered by chance to be an original painting by a master
Otago artist, worth $17,500.
The late Douglas Badcock was asked to create the oil on board
painting of Mt Alfred and a rustic dwelling with Mt Earnslaw
in the background, near Glenorchy, by Jeunesse Reid, of the
Glenpanel homestead on Ladies Mile, Queenstown, in 1965.
After the flower show, it was displayed in the billiard room
at Glenpanel, but the intention to frame it was not
fulfilled. The family sold Glenpanel in 1976 and the painting
was packed away.
Arrowtown Gallery owner Simon Beadle said he was asked by the
family to value a few paintings before they left for
Australia about a year ago.
"I saw it behind a couch in three pieces and I said, `That's
a Badcock and too good to be stuck behind a sofa.'"I was
excited. I love Badcock's paintings of the era of the 1960s,
for his lovely, free-flowing style."
Mr Beadle seamlessly glued the unsigned pieces back together
then carefully touched up, revarnished and framed the piece
for display and sale in the Arrowtown Gallery.
The painting measures about 2m by 1m. It features an unusual
shade for the sky and some artistic licence with geographical
scale, he said.
"I think it would have been done reasonably quicker than his
commissioned work, but a lot of his paintings were this way,
with bold brush strokes.
"This is just a wee bit more free-flowing, in an
expressionist style."
Badcock was born in Balclutha in 1922 and eventually made
Queenstown, then Speargrass Flat, near Arrowtown, his home,
with wife Bonnie and their four children.
Their three sons became artists in their own right. The
couple moved to Clyde before the end of the century and he
died in 2009 after she died in 2001.
Badcock won first prize in the Kelliher Art competition in
1965 and wrote three books. He preferred to paint landscapes
in oils on site and had a reputation for selling out
exhibitions.
His paintings grace the collections of Queen Elizabeth II and
the King of Thailand.
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