Thursday 1 August

5:30 pm

Alan Bollard will survey the portrait art done by New Zealand’s official and unofficial war artists during WW2. This ranges from the stiff official officer portraits to the myth and reality of  soldiers around the camp sites and in the battle fields. It includes rough sketches on notepaper, watercolours done in tents at night, and oils painted in studios. Some of it was done for families, some for the official record, and some was wartime propaganda.

Alan Bollard is Chair of The NZ Portrait Gallery. He is a lecturer, Board Director and author, with a background running Treasury, Reserve Bank of NZ and APEC. He has written several books on economists at war, wartime novels, and edited war diaries.

Image credit: Soldier in Camouflage, by Russell Clark, 1945. (Image from Archives NZ).