The Pumpkin Cottage Art Collection
The Pumpkin Cottage collection is a nationally significant collection of work from the early impressionist movement which was nurtured at the legendary Pumpkin Cottage, Silverstream, Upper Hutt. It features paintings by James Nairn, Mabel Hill, Girolamo Nerli, Frances Hodgkins and Nugent Welch among others.
Local art collectors Ernest and his wife Shirley gifted 39 Pumpkin Cottage paintings to Expressions Whirinaki Trust for the people of Upper Hutt in 2009 and the works have been in the Centre's safe keeping ever since. These significant Pumpkin Cottage paintings are the City's first permanent art collection which continues to grow thanks to several generous gifts.
Visit Upper Hutt's WHIRINAKI ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE to see these wonderful Impressionists paintings.
Silverstream
SILVERSTREAM
by William Tiller
Oil, 505mm (h) x 620mm (w)
William Tiller was a draper's assistant at Wellington's Kirkcaldie and Stains department store. He was a neighbour of Nugent Welch in Wright Street, and in 1920 joined the independent Society of Seven artists and exhibited in their last two exhibitions. The eye moves from the painterly clump of grasses in the foreground across the deep expanse of beautifully coloured stones and water to the outline of hills against bright blue sky.
Hutt River, Silverstream
HUTT RIVER, SILVERSTREAM
Darcy Nicholas
Oil, 542mm (h) x 642mm (w)
Pumpkin Cottage
PUMPKIN COTTAGE
by B. E. Chapple
Oil, 255mm (h) x 339mm (w)
B.E. (Bessie) Chapple (1883 - 1965) trained under James Nairn and M.E.R. Tripe from about 1897 until 1901 at Wellington Technical School. She had a long association with Pumpkin Cottage and the various incarnations of the Wellington Art Club from 1907. She painted this between about 1920, when St Patrick's College added the lean-to at the rear to the original cottage, and 1946 when the old wooden brudge on Hutt Main Road (now Fergusson Drive) was replaced by a concrete culvert. In this painting, Bessie focuses on the expanse of Whirinaki Creek at the Pumpkin Cottage ford. From a low viewpoint, she rendered the water in pure blue dabs of paint which contrast vividly with the green weeds and grasses. Such a painterly Impressionist composition with its shapely cropped angle of the bridge would have made her former art teacher, James Nairn.
Plimmerton
PLIMMERTON
by Frederick Sedgwick
Watercolour, 458mm (h) x 485mm (w)
Silverstream
SILVERSTREAM
by William Tiller
Oil, 320mm (h) x 455mm (w)
William (Bill) Tiller (1861 - 1935) first exhibited as a young Wellington Technical School student with the Wellington Art Club in 1896. He was associated with Pumpkin Cottage for over 40 years. He was probably staying at the cottage when he captured this beautiful impression of fading light at the end of the day. The characteristic Silverstream hills are recognisable, but topography is less important to the Impressionist painter than the opportunity to rapidly paint the colours cast by the light and shadow.
Wairarapa Landscape
WAIRARAPA LANDSCAPE
by Arthur A. Bender
Oil, 370mm (h) x 493mm (w)
