But this isn’t a view that can be captured with a camera.
In January, Christchurch realism painter Sean Fietje travelled up and down Skyline’s gondola 15 times over three days, taking a total of 500 reference photos of the iconic Queenstown views from a variety of different angles — for a painting.
The painting was commissioned by a Kiwi collector, who now lives in Australia.
Fietje, who’s just been signed to Queenstown’s ArtBay Gallery, says he spent about 250 hours creating the jaw-dropping piece, making sure the colours in the sky and water were as close to reality as possible and, with tiny brushes, worked on every detail of the town, right down to windowsills.
He also "disappeared" gondola cables and some trees to produce an unobstructed and broader picture of the landscape.
Fietje’s spent the past two years in Christchurch establishing himself as a full-time realism oil painter — each painting goes for between $15,000 and $20,000.
Always the "art kid" at school at West Melton, he went on to teach art for international schools in South Africa and Hong Kong for almost 20 years, where he also completed commissioned works, before Covid brought him back to Canterbury in 2022 — and the ex-pat’s commission brought him to Queenstown.
