Art sleuths revive Rutland

By LINDA HERRICK

Solid detective work is behind the reunion of a group of artists who played a role in Auckland's cultural scene many years ago.

A dozen surviving members - aged between 73 and 94 - of the Rutland Group gathered on Saturday at Parnell's Kinder House to toast each other with a cup of tea and reminisce about times past.

Auckland University's Elam fine art school head Professor Michael Dunn and prominent artist Don Binney both spoke of the significance of the Rutland Group, and a collection of the artists' work remains on show at Kinder House until mid-December.

You might be forgiven for thinking "Rutland what?" With the group folding in the late 1950s, the stories have faded and many members have died. But retired Auckland Museum librarians Ian Thwaites and Rie Fletcher, both expert sleuths in the art of research, decided to bring about the reunion and track down each and every member who'd been a Rutlander during its 1935-58 history.

Besides, they got an offer they couldn't refuse. Fletcher has been a longtime friend of group member Ruth Coyle, aged 94, "and Ruth asked us if we could please write up the group", says Thwaites. "That's how it started. You don't refuse a 94-year-old."

The Rutland Group was named after the building - in Rutland St, near the city library - which housed the original Elam Art School, in the days when it was a high school. Most of the group's members, up to 35 at any given time, were former Elam students, who met monthly to appraise each other's work, encouraged by Elam director A.J.C. Fisher who wanted to see the standard raised.

With each member required to produce at least six works a year for an exhibition, the Rutland Group fostered a remarkable number of artists whose work was reviewed and noted in the art journals of the day, notably The Year Book of the Arts in New Zealand, and the magazine Art in New Zealand, which today provide invaluable archival records.

The Rutland artists include significant names such as Eric Lee-Johnson, Peggy Spicer, Ron Stenberg and Sina Woolcott, and many more less familiar to contemporary ears. The exhibition, with associated photos and ephemera, offers a rare chance to explore that period of our art history.

Binney believes the reunion was "an affirmative gesture. You must honour your forebears with the honour that's due and a little bit of reflective returning to older sources may provide a very salutary balance".

Fletcher and Thwaites say the project has been fascinating, and doesn't end with the reunion and show - they plan to release a stylish book along the lines of Thwaites' recent publication, In Another Dimension: Auckland Bookplates 1920-60, a finely crafted collectors' item.

"We are not art historians but we decided to attack it because of our library and genealogical skills," says Thwaites.

"Everything about these people is interesting to us - it doesn't matter whether they're famous or not, they were all very talented. Our focus is social history."

Amazingly, the internet was not a tool in their efforts to locate the Rutland Group members. "No!" they both chorus.

"To find one person I went through every electoral roll, and the births, deaths and marriage records," relates Thwaites. "We researched wills, looked for reviews in Art in New Zealand, sometimes newspaper reviews. The minute book of the group has disappeared and they rarely issued catalogues so it really has been looking for a needle in a haystack."

There's still plenty of work to do, many hours of happy sleuthing ahead before they can put the book together, but they have set a deadline.

"We want to get the book out next year so some of the older members of the group can read it," says Thwaites.

"One of them said to me she knew where she'd be in November 2002 but was not so sure about November 2003."

* The Rutland Group Revisited, Kinder House, 2 Ayr St, Parnell, from tomorrow to December 15 (Tuesday-Sunday, 11am-3pm).