Gallery conservator cleans early painting at clinic

An accomplished art work by a late Dunedin artist, which depicted Waterloo Bridge, London, attracted extra attention at a free art clinic yesterday.

This painting, created by the late Dunedin artist Eana Jeans in the 1930s or 1940s, was among a series of works brought in during the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s first free art clinic since the Covid-19 lockdown.

Gallery conservator Jenny Sherman was particularly pleased to see the "accomplished" work, which was brought in to the morning clinic by gallery society president Associate Prof Thomas McLean.

Prof McLean enjoyed discussing the work with Ms Sherman.

She was pleased the art clinics were running again, after the coronavirus lockdown.

"For me it’s a really nice way to given something back to the community, interacting with the community, that’s what’s really great," she said.

Other works by Jeans are held at the Hocken Collections, the Dunedin Public Libraries and the public art gallery.

Born in Australia in 1890, Jeans shifted to Dunedin in 1894, later studying art at Otago Girls’ High School, the Dunedin School of Art and the Barn Studio before travelling to England in 1934, and studying at the Slade School of Art in London, later returning to Dunedin where she died, aged 95, in 1986.

Gallery exhibitions and collection manager Tim Pollock said the free art clinics had been offered regularly at the gallery since 2012, but had switched from monthly to quarterly a year ago.

The clinics had always been popular, enabling people to learn more about their art works, including family heirlooms, he said.

Artist and Dunedin School of Art lecturer Anita DeSoto said it had also been "good fun" learning more about a somewhat brooding lakeside painting she had long owned.