Supporting the Sarjeant: Cranleigh Harper Barton's journeys as an artist

Paiges Bookshop stocks Abroad - The Travel Journals and Paintings of Cranleigh Harper Barton.

Supporting the Sarjeant: A look into the collection of the Sarjeant Art Gallery

A watercolour artist with strong connections to Whanganui, Cranleigh Harper Barton, travelled extensively, financing his travels around the world in the first half of the 20th century by painting and selling as he went.

An illustrated book about the prolific painter and diary writer, Abroad – The Travel Journals and Paintings of Cranleigh Harper Barton, was celebrated recently at the Sarjeant Gallery. The gallery holds a few of Cranleigh's paintings and the Whanganui Regional Museum holds 150 works, which Cranleigh donated.

Author of the book Gerry Barton, with a background in museums and history, is Cranleigh's great-nephew. He says he was fascinated by the social history he discovered in the 85-plus journals that make up Cranleigh's diary from 1908 to1975.

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In all my years in museums I've never come across such an archival treasure as Cranleigh's legacy - pure gold for anybody who took the trouble to extract a narrative from it all.

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The book covers most of the artist's slow travels about the world by boats, trains and horse-drawn coaches up to 1937, however he travelled much more widely, including China (in 1965, an unusual time to be a tourist there), Canada, the United States, Australia through Indonesia, India, Pakistan and down to Kenya, then on land to Cape Town and by boat to England. He visited most European countries; went overland from London to Madras; Japan, South America, the Caribbean and Iceland.

"In all my years in museums I've never come across such an archival treasure as Cranleigh's legacy - pure gold for anybody who took the trouble to extract a narrative from it all. The fact that this social history spanned the world made it even more interesting. All this was complemented by being able to illustrate the journals with his watercolour paintings."

The book, drawing on Cranleigh's journals, also conveys a vivid picture of New Zealand 100 years ago.

Cranleigh was born in Feilding and, in 1918, his parents, Ernest and Margaret Barton, moved to Grey Street, Whanganui. His great-grandparents were the pioneer missionary couple, Richard and Caroline Taylor, and his grandparents other early Wanganui settlers, Thomas and Sarah Harper.

Cranleigh trained as a lawyer and worked as a solicitor in Whanganui in 1915, and in the early 1920s.

"By his associations with men such as Charles Mackay and D'Arcy Cresswell it is clear he was part of the covert 'gay' scene in the city at the time. Whanganui is where he commenced painting, and rapidly decided art was his vocation."
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Paiges Bookshop stocks Abroad - The Travel Journals and Paintings of Cranleigh Harper Barton.

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In 1921, following his passion for watercolour, he decided to make his living as a working artist and became one of the country's earliest artists to make a full-time living from painting.

Cranleigh travelled light, his tools of trade being a paint box, paper, brushes, a water flask and a fold-up stool. He painted on the spot, often surrounded by local children, and worked up the pictures on his hotel balcony, or if at sea, in his cabin or the ship's library.

He sold the paintings sometimes before the paint was dry, other times in ad hoc exhibitions in ship and hotel lounges, or by canvassing the practices of lawyers, architects, doctors and commercial offices in whichever town or city he happened to be.

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Also he was immune to racist opinions. In an era where "wog", "chinkie", etc, were casually used by a great many people, including one well-known New Zealand historian who later would have known better, Cranleigh never used derogatory terms.

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"Cranleigh grew up to become a young man with good manners and all the social graces required for polite society seemingly in any context he found himself," Barton says. "This is why he could approach people and sell them paintings; he was of their class, charming, talented to a certain degree and full of interesting stories of places not many people had ever visited.

"Also he was immune to racist opinions. In an era where "wog", "chinkie", etc, were casually used by a great many people, including one well-known New Zealand historian who later would have known better, Cranleigh never used derogatory terms. In fact he seemed completely at ease with Palestinians (when in Jerusalem), Indians (when in British India), and Samoans (when in Western Samoa).

"He seemed not to have a racist bone in his body. His broad-minded attitude towards people deeply impressed me."