But questions remain about who breathed new life into the historic depictions of the region’s gold fever — and when.
Central Stories Museum and Art Gallery manager Paula Stephenson said the 28 Gold Rush panels now on display were painted by Clark in 1936.
They were bought by the Alexandra museum from the City Hotel’s last owner, the late Stewart Elms, for $30,000.
After the hotel was demolished in 1986, Mr Elms settled in Central Otago and started the Felton Road vineyard at Bannockburn.
Unsure of what to do with the panels, Mr Elms contacted pre-eminent Central Otago artist Sir Grahame Sydney for his opinion.
Sir Grahame said the pile of large, yellowing and rather home-made-looking murals were immediately of interest.
"I made it clear that propped up against a dark, rear wall of a winery shed was no place for such objects.
"They deserved a better home, like a museum, and I knew exactly which one."
There was no debate that the panels were commissioned by the Masetti family, who owned Dunedin’s City Hotel in 1936, Ms Stephenson said.
Clark was 31 years old and painted the series of panels depicting the 1860s Central Otago gold rush, allegedly to pay off his food and drink bill at the hotel — although that could not be verified.
Clark used new techniques for the work, including airbrushing, stencilling and using a projector to enlarge his paper drawings.
The panels survived a fire at the hotel in 1952 and the smoke damage that affected the original colours and the panels had been touched up.
There is evidence of further work on them in the Dunedin scenes, where the City Hotel has a sign saying "City Hotel, C.S. Elms Propr".
But the Elms had not not bought the hotel until several years after the panels were painted.
Mr Elms had said he had commissioned Clark to repaint the panels in 1962.
However, Sir Grahame said he doubted that.
"l very much doubt that Clark, in full flight as an Ilam tutor and busy modernist sculptor in 1962, only a couple of years before he died, would have been interested in spending time restoring 27 painted panels," Sir Grahame said.
"He was scarcely painting anything at that stage."
The textured background suggested they were painted on wallpaper.
Ms Stephenson said Central Otago artist Nigel Wilson had helped hang the panels at the gallery and museum and at the time commented he thought the base looked like embossed wallpaper.
Sir Grahame also found that unlikely.
"I’m certain Clark would never have painted on wallpaper, even during the Depression," he said.
Ms Stephenson said engaging an art conservator would be the only way to determine what the panels were on, but photographs taken at the City Hotel in the 1950s and 1960s could give a clue to when the panels were repainted.
It seemed unlikely to have been in 1962, ten years after the fire, she said.
Clark was well-known by then and it seemed odd there was no record of him working on the panels again.
It would have been likely the hotel would have advertised he was there as the publicity would have been good for their business, Ms Stephenson said.
Clark moved to Wellington in the late 1930s and worked for magazines and journals, including the New Zealand Listener and the School Journal.
The panels are on display until the end of next month.
