Under a Red Sky

Tribal warfare was a feature of early Aotearoa New Zealand, but from the mid-nineteenth century there was a new and common adversary. Arrivals from Europe put growing pressures on Māori land, and visual records of subsequent conflicts were produced by soldier artists such as Majors Gustavus von Tempsky and Charles Heaphy. In 1899 this country took part in its first overseas conflict, demonstrating loyalty to Britain by promptly despatching trained troops to South Africa. Few images resulted from those experiences on the veldt, but the tradition of appointing official artists began with the next major conflict, the Great War of 1914–18. Nugent Welch, George Butler and Captain A. Pearce were instructed to make sketches of the Western Front that could be used later as a basis for studio paintings. A precedent was set; Peter McIntyre, Russell Clark and Allan Barns-Graham were this country’s official Second World War artists, and the tradition continues, with the appointment of the current official