Dunedin Public Art Gallery pays tribute to the Sargood family in an exhibition opening today. Rebecca Fox looks at the history of the family's support of the gallery over the decades.
One hundred years ago today, Cedric Rolfe Sargood was killed at Gallipoli.
His death, one of the tragic thousands in that campaign, went on to have a significant impact on Dunedin's art world.
It prompted his parents Lucy and Percy Sargood (later to become Sir and Lady Percy) to give substantial funds to establish the city's public art gallery at Logan Park as a tribute to their lost son.
Logan Park had been home to the International South Seas Exhibition so they bought the buildings left in its wake and donated them to the Dunedin City Council and Dunedin Public Art Gallery Society.
It came at the right time, as the gallery was starting to grow out of its home in what is now Toitu Otago Settlers Museum.
Sir Percy, who ran his family's warehousing business in New Zealand, had a passion for the arts and from 1929 to 1932 was president of the art gallery society.
The depth of his interest was demonstrated by his founding of the Empire Loan Collection Society, which was set up to bring international exhibitions to New Zealand and other commonwealth countries.
Gallery staff have discovered a letter in its archives that Sir Percy wrote suggesting the concept to Britain's Tate Gallery.
''It was a very innovative initiative,'' public programmes and collection manager Robyn Notman says.
In its 10 years, it organised nine exhibitions of paintings, miniatures, ceramics and prints to visit New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Jamaica and South Africa.
When Sir Percy died in 1940, he left much of his art collection, sculpture and artefacts to the Dunedin gallery and Otago Museum.
He also left funds that were added to by Lady Sargood and gifted to the gallery for a new wing to be built at Logan Park.
The Sargood Wing housed many of the family's treasures, which included decorative arts sourced from their many travels around the world on Sir Percy's business.
''They travelled a lot for Sir Percy's work, so he came in contact with new British artists not seen in New Zealand and brought it back,'' curator Lauren Gutsell said.
Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand says Sir Percy's greatest contribution was in endowing art galleries ''rather than selecting work of national significance''.
''One item, a large piece of 19th-century Italian marble sculpture, was donated to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and many years later removed from the collection.''
Nevertheless, some of the work he chose to contribute has remained in the collection.
The first work was donated by Sir Percy - painting The Green Jacket, by Charles Curran - in 1926, after it had been exhibited in the South Seas exhibition.
''There was a relatively steady flow of works he considered important or fitting additions to the gallery.
''He had a broad definition of art.''
At its peak, the support included four major works by Sir Frank Brangwyn, which were some of the most important British works in the gallery's collection.
Before his death Sir Percy set up the Sargood Bequest to support the arts and youth in Dunedin.
In 1984, to mark the centenary year of the art gallery, Sir Percy's grandson, the late Rolfe Sargood Mills pointed out the weakest area of the gallery was its acquisitions department, so the bequest's trustees set up the P. R. Sargood Acquisition Fund and donated $100,000 to it.
It helped buy major works, including those by Colin McCahon and the Neil Dawson sculpture in the foyer of the gallery.
The bequest continued to support the gallery, endorsing and financially supporting the relocation of the gallery to the Octagon in the late 1980s.
It has also been generous in donating towards the equipment needed to conserve the gallery's collection.
The curators found an old photograph of the Sargood Gallery featuring its china cabinets and hoped to re-create the feel of the gallery for the exhibition.
''People who visited remember those cases full of ceramics and marble statues, so it won't exclusively be painting. It's important to include some of the other material as well,'' Robyn Notman says.
The exhibition
• ''The Sargood Gift'', August 8 to November 8, Dunedin Public Art Gallery
