Robert Atkinson (1863-1896)

Born in Leeds, Atkinson studied in Antwerp under Verlat and travelled to New Zealand in 1885 for health reasons, taking a studio in Victoria Arcade, Auckland. He was a friend of the painters Kate McCosh Clark and Albin Martin, whose portrait he painted (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki). He exhibited in Melbourne, Sydney, and Auckland from 1885-89. He returned to England in 1889 where he worked as an illustrator and went back to New Zealand in 1895. He died in Dunedin in 1896. His New Zealand work, and especially a New Zealand genre subject on this relatively grand scale, remains extremely rare. For his fine watercolour of a Maori girl, Te Uira, see Christie's South Kensington, 20 Nov. 1986, lot 250 (£11,000).