Sarjeant Gallery, Frank Denton 1926 Photo: Collection of Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery
Martin Edmond Photo: Mayu Kanamori
Acclaimed writer Martin Edmond did his Christmas shopping in Whanganui as a child, travelling down the river from Ohakune where he was raised. They were, he says, more conservative times, with the gallery sometimes dubbed locally as ‘the morgue’.
That's certainly not the case. Times have changed. Today the gallery harks back to the progressive vision a 100 years ago that saw the city in boomtime, and the gallery open in 1919 as only the third in the country.
The commissioned Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery: A Whanganui biography by Edmond, published by Massey University Press, is a lively history. It reveals much about the politics and history of a small New Zealand provincial city; as its swings between conservatism and being one of the country’s most progressive.
Photo: supplied
The political tussles the gallery finds itself embroiled in will strike a chord with many in other centres.
It’s generally a fascinating account of Aotearoa New Zealand history, and some determined unusual individuals. The book, a literary event of its own in parallel with the gallery’s reopening.
Writing a biography of the gallery rather than just a history, was the brief given to Edmond on commission.
That meant, he says, he felt he needed to speak to the land it is built on. The gallery sits in now public parkland on a sand hill, Pukenamu. It was formerly a pa site before a military garrison, as British colonial troops protected the new residents.
The Rutland Stockade on Pukenamu, photographed as part of a panorama in 1872. Ruapehu is in the far distance Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library
Edmond begins with the establishment of the city itself: dubious land deals as the city becomes an important colonial stronghold. Indeed, the gallery itself is the result of a single generous bequest from a local arts-loving landowner Henry Sarjeant, whose widow, Ellen Neame, ensured the gallery’s future after his death.
Sarjeant’s gift in today’s terms is about $70 million, the cost of the current impressive extension and restoration project, and he also left funds and rents to ensure its running into the future.
“Henry Sarjeant no doubt he was a good man - a benefactor and a philanthropist - but he made his money out of stolen land as many great land barons did,” says Edmond, “so there’s a contradiction at the heart of that gift I think. But what’s fascinating about the Sarjeant, as it's developed, is how it has become very much a bicultural institution.”
Charles Mackay’s prison photograph, taken on his arrival at Mount Eden Prison. 1920. Photo: Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kawānatanga
Some Sarjeant stories have become well known and themselves the subject of recent books. The attempted murder of Walter D'Arcy Cresswell by Mayor Charles Mackay - a key figure in the gallery being realised - not long after the gallery’s opening. And the story of Whanganui artist Edith Collier, whose work is celebrated in an exhibition that opens Te Whare o Rehua.
The gallery cat Mrs McSweeney on top of Raffaello Romanellis’s The Wrestlers in 1971. Wanganui Chronicle. Photo: Wanganui Chronicle.
Yet Edmond’s book reveals many more rich stories and characters besides, from the gallery cat Mrs McSweeney to the building’s ‘real’ architect, the young Donald Hosie, who died at Passchendaele and is now getting better recognition.
Edmond shares many of these stories with reader Mark Amery on Culture 101.
