I sent information and images about this clock to Sir George White, keeper of the Clockmakers Guild in London. I had read the inscription on the rondel on the dial as ‘‘T Wilson’’ and described the life of a Kendal clockmaker, Titus Wilson, in the last column.
Sir George’s reply was that no, the first initial was ‘‘N’’. He supplied a link to an auction sale in France in 2003.
The associated image certainly is of something very like Mrs Ibbotson’s clock. It’s smaller and the catalogue information is that the inscription is ‘‘N. Wilson’’ then below that ‘‘Kendal’’. This may possibly be the Nicholas Wilson, Kendal, recorded in Baillie’s great
compendium as active 1770-95. But that man is recorded as a watchmaker, not a clockmaker. This will take more effort but it’s worth the trouble for these aesthetic objects which have been in New Zealand for a long time.
From the letter you might suppose someone believed he was the artist of the painting. But his initials were W.F.D. not G.F.D.
I sent images of the painting, the signature and the letter on the back to the Scottish National Galleries in Edinburgh asking who they thought the artist was.
Helen Smailes replied saying she didn’t know but agreeing it wasn’t by Sir William. She estimated it was painted in the mid 19th century. She suggested I try Sotheby’s or Christie’s but they no longer really help people inquiring about works they don’t intend to
sell or buy.
There’s probably someone somewhere who could swiftly say who G.F.D. is. My problem is trying to find that someone. All in all you may feel I’ve been getting nowhere fast. Perhaps, but it’s fun trying.
Genre paintings such as this have long been deeply out of fashion here and elsewhere. But this is a good thing of its sort, painted, I would say, by a professional.
At the Milford Galleries there’s an exhibition by Jenna Packer, of Waitati (b. 1967), The Art of the Deal, which runs to September 6. There are several works and many include an image of a horned bull sometimes complete and at others with merely tracing for the lower body. The bull is also ghostly in a number of instances. Some works don’t have a bull but feature fields and trees, one with an old-fashioned traction engine belching smoke as it powers an elevator to stack wheat. It’s called folk tale and was painted this
year.
In many ways the works seem to be set in Victorian times to judge from the machinery at work but there are also skyscrapers and what seems to be a curious kind of helicopter so, really, they are not time specific.
There are 17 works in all, some larger and others smaller. Together they make a considerable impression.
Ms Packer attended the Ilam School of Art in Christchurch graduating in 1988 with a bachelor of fine arts. The following year she graduated with a bachelor of arts in history with first class honours. In the 1990s, she continued her development with time at the Glasgow Print Workshop, the Otago Polytechnic, the Slade School of Art in London and La Rouelle Studio in France. She is a painter, a printmaker and an illustrator. She has been exhibiting since 1990 both in New Zealand and overseas.
It has been said: ‘‘Painting metaphorical and alternate histories, Jenna Packer comments on journeys of discovery, evolution, the survival instinct of escape, fragility, and the endless possibilities of life.’’ Reference has also been made to the delicacy of her technique
and the fact that while her images at first seem to be historical observations, on closer inspection they are seen to present ‘‘alternative social and colonial histories’’.
A work that caught my attention is titled furnace. It is an acrylic on canvas 111.6cm x 137cm. There is a huge bull-furnace in an old-fashioned barn. It has a metal rod it uses to steam operate a huge red-painted metal press, a powerful display indeed.
●Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
