NEW ZEALAND ART STUDENTS ASSOCIATION

A short lived group formed in Auckland 1884 with a view to developing an art distinctive of New Zealand. Kennett Watkins was first President, Sam Stuart first Secretary. There were Senior and Junior ‘Art Students’: the former, many of whom were leading Auckland Society of Arts members, had to pass a quite exacting test to qualify for membership. Members from other centres were accepted and in the first year there were honorary members too. Exhibitions in 1884–85 were held, as Auckland Society of Arts exhibitions were, in the Choral Hall: a small exhibition in 1886 was held in a room of a city store. In 1887 it was decided that money from surplus funds was to be devoted to the purchase of one or more works of art by New Zealand artists and shown at annual Auckland Society of Arts exhibitions, such pictures to be the property of the Society of Arts. It could be guessed that some of the aims of the Association were somewhat akin to those of the landscape painters of the Pre-Raphaelites: each detail to be exact.