Works from the Collection of Dr. Ian and Elespie Prior

It’s difficult to have been involved in the arts community in the late twentieth and early twenty first century and not to have had some involvement with the Priors and their influence on the cultural community of Aotearoa New Zealand. The impact of their collective and extensive heritage of patronage can be felt from Dunedin through to the Wairarapa, from the visual arts through to the performing arts and opera singing.

As Marcus Boroughs writes in the catalogue foreword of ‘Luncheon under the Ash Tree: The Ian and Elespie Prior Collection’: “The Prior collection is the product of a complex network of family connections and social links. It represents life and friendships with artists… Developed through warm and loving relationships it has a strong heart…”

Boroughs’ quote sums up nicely the prevailing characteristic of the Prior collection, the notion of collecting as a means of illuminating a shared life together, as part of a cultural community.

That much of Ian and Elespie Prior’s art collection was ultimately bequeathed by the Prior family after Ian’s passing to Aratoi, Wairarapa Museum of Art and History Gallery in Masterton where Ian was raised, provides an ongoing reminder of their philanthropic legacy.

Ian Prior is regarded as one of the founders of epidemiology in this country and is particularly lauded for his studies in this field with Māori and Cook Islanders.

His work on illness within a broader community context began with Tuhoe, initially in Ruatahuna. He was also active in a number of environmental campaigns and founded the Wellington Sculpture Trust in 1982. He met Elespie Forsyth whilst studying at Otago University in 1943. Elespie was the granddaughter of the merchant businessman and artefact collector Willi Fels who donated some 80 000 pieces to Otago Museum, and cousin of Charles Brasch, the founder of the literary journal Landfall, responsible for leaving such a rich legacy to the Hocken Library in Dunedin.

Damian Skinner has remarked: “One can see the shaping of the Prior collection by Dunedin as a cultural location, by Brasch and his enthusiasms and patronage, and by family connections to artists like Evelyn Page.”

Together Ian and Elespie collected art for over fifty years. Their collection is informed by connectedness, both cultural and familial.

Such connections play out explicitly in the Ralph Hotere work Winter Anemones, presented by Hotere to them and which quotes directly from a poem by Elespie’s cousin, Charles Brasch. This collusion of the personal and art historical is also seen in the major Evelyn Page painting Nude with Fruit, one of several Evelyn Page paintings purchased by the Priors.

Evelyn Page first painted Elespie in 1939 and Ian Prior credited her husband Fred with his most valuable piece of collecting advice, convincing him to focus on an artist’s handling of paint and brushwork. The emphasis on the painterly is in abundance in this painting with its joyful and vigorous celebration of femininity and sensuality.