Darling pieces of art

The Forrester will soon have space to move artists out of the shadows. Artists such as Anna Darling, writes Chloe Searle.

At the Forrester Gallery we have been focused for many years on extending our building. After a lot of fundraising and planning we are now getting ready for construction to start in early 2025 and the building to open in April 2026. Exciting times!

The planned extension includes a public lift, a purpose-built collection store, a loading dock, and a new touring exhibition gallery, as well as an education and events space.

Our team is now starting to consider our "day-one" exhibitions — the shows visitors will see on the day the new spaces open to the public. Some of these shows will draw on works from the Forrester Gallery’s own collection of about 2500 artworks. I recently had the pleasure of spending two days methodically going through each work in the collection with an eye to which ones could be part of those first exhibitions.

One artist who kept drawing my attention was Anna Darling (1867-1954). She was born near Waikouaiti. She was the seventh of nine children born to John Wallace and Barbara Murdoch.

She first attended school in Palmerston then subsequently in Dunedin, where she was a student friend of Frances Hodgkins. Darling and Hodgkins both attended the Dunedin School of Art together. When Anna married William Rutherford Darling in 1895, Hodgkins was in attendance. Darling and her husband had four children together.

Darling’s progress as an artist was perhaps limited by having to fit her painting around family life. She was widowed at the relatively early age of 52, when her youngest child was 13 years old. She nevertheless continued to create art, and the Forrester Gallery holds 17 works either known to be by Darling or attributed to her. Of those, the pieces that are dated were created between 1910 and 1921. This coincides with when her children would have been at home.

The works held by the Forrester Gallery are all watercolours, each roughly A4. They focus on scenes of local places and buildings, including paintings of Moeraki, Oamaru, Waianakarua and St Clair.

Gallery records show Darling later took time to travel overseas and may have undertaken further art studies in Paris while touring Europe. During the 1920s and 1930s she exhibited her work with art societies in Canterbury and Otago.

Darling passed away in 1954, in her late 80s. Some of the works in the Forrester Gallery collection were donated by her daughter Margaret Darling.

I know Darling is just one of the many artists in the collection who will be seen more frequently when our renovations are complete. Having the space to share more collection works means artists like Darling will be remembered and celebrated.

Chloe Searle is director of the Forrester Gallery and Waitaki Museum and Archive Te Whare Taoka o Waitaki.