Elizabeth Wallwork

Biography

The girl who would be known after her marriage as Elizabeth Wallwork was born on 20 July 1883 in Broughton, Lancashire, under the surname Donaldson. She was the sixth of nine children of Elizabeth Ann Hibbert and John Donaldson, a wholesale fish merchant. Nothing is known of her childhood and youth.

From 1899 to 1906 Elizabeth studied at the Manchester Municipal School of Art. There she met her future husband, the artist Richard Wallwork. In 1906 she moved to the Slade School of Fine Art in London and in 1907–1908 received two first-class certificates, in drawing and in painting; at that time the school awarded no other qualifications. She was given the Lady Whitworth Scholarship. In 1909 she returned to Manchester and until the end of 1910 exhibited with Richard in Manchester and Liverpool. Both also sent work to the Paris Salon. In 1910 Richard took a teaching post at the School of Art in Liverpool, and on 16 July of that year they were married at Cheetham Hill, in Manchester.

Almost at once he was offered a position at the Canterbury College School of Art in Christchurch. The couple left England in December 1910 so that he could begin at the start of the 1911 academic year.

In New Zealand both joined the Canterbury Society of Arts and travelled widely around the country to paint landscapes. Richard gave much of his energy to the school, while Elizabeth chose the path of a portraitist and worked mainly for private clients. She became one of the foremost exponents of pastel portraiture in New Zealand. She also painted miniatures and, in oil, portraits of women and children, and as her reputation grew, portraits of prominent citizens of Christchurch. Her repertoire included landscapes and Impressionist flower pieces; the flowers she showed through the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. She exhibited with the Auckland Society of Arts, the Canterbury Society of Arts, the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and the Otago Art Society. Her work was seen in Sydney, at the British Empire Exhibition in London (1924), at the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition in Dunedin (1925–1926) and at the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition of 1940.

In 1925 and 1946 she taught several classes at the Canterbury College School of Art. Her husband died in April 1955; she kept working and occasionally took portrait commissions. She enjoyed bridge and played the piano well.

Elizabeth Wallwork died on 4 June 1969 in Christchurch, at the age of 85. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu.