By SCOTT MacLEOD
Te Papa has paid $1.78 million for a Colin McCahon artwork, in what may be a record sum for a New Zealand painting.
The purchase comes three months after the Government announced an $11 million funding boost for the Wellington museum to help it cope with a budget blowout and deferred maintenance.
Te Papa bought the work, A Painting for Uncle Frank, from an anonymous collector who will be paid in instalments over four years.
The painting was sold in 1980 by Wellington art dealer Peter McLeavey for less than $20,000.
That was the "value of McCahon's work at that period," he said.
Te Papa chief executive Dame Cheryll Sotheran said the value of McCahon paintings had rocketed in the past year and independent valuers felt it could have fetched $1 million more in Australia.
"There was a serious risk that this wonderful work would have been sold overseas and lost to New Zealand," she said. " [It] is arguably the most significant McCahon to come on the market for some time."
Dame Cheryll said the 1980 painting formed a bridge between McCahon's earlier landscape works and later pieces based on words.
It blended images of the Taranaki and Ahipara mountains with biblical text that typified the dilemma of faith common in McCahon's work.
Art critics last night said they believed the price was a record for any painting by a New Zealander.
"Dear God, it's incredible," said Herald art critic Terry McNamara, before agreeing with Dame Cheryll that the value of McCahon paintings had soared.
Auckland art consultant Hamish Keith said the sum was "absolutely a record."
"It's a particularly important painting and I think the price is fine, no problem," he said.
Record prices for paintings are hard to track because many sales are private and for undisclosed sums. However, New Zealand paintings rarely fetch more than $50,000 at auction.
A 1963 Don Binney bird painting that recently sold for $60,000 was believed to be a record at auction for a piece by a living New Zealander.
Other McCahon pieces have sold for whopping sums in private sales. Perhaps the best-known is Storm Warning, which sparked a furore last year when Victoria University sold it to a New Zealand couple for an undisclosed sum believed to be close to $1.5 million.
Te Papa will display its new purchase from today, and will include it with some of the museum's 29 other McCahon paintings in a major exhibition earmarked for 2002.
Te Papa pays record $1.78m for McCahon
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