Local MP Nick Smith showed a definite interest in history when selecting his favourite work from the collection.  Swaying between a number of works from New Zealand’s colonial period, Nick finally settled on this contemporary painting by Nelson artist, Sally Burton.

“We tend to romanticise the early settlers experience” say Nick.  “What I like about this work of Sally’s is that it looks real and hard and more like the reality of colonial life in New Zealand.  It is also mixes traditional and modern painting in that parts of it are expressionist and other parts are real people – just look at their expressions!”  

This painting is an appropriation of English Pre-Raphaelite painter, Ford Madox Brown’s The Last of England.  This was made soon after the departure of Brown’s friend, the sculptor Thomas Woolner to Australia during the peak of English emigration to the colonies.  Brown himself was considering a move to India, and this painting could be thought of as a musing on the realities of colonial life.

 Sally Burton saw Brown’s painting on a research trip to England in the early 1980s.  Her version includes references to New Zealand and features a stitching motif along the left side.  This motif captures Burton’s concerns at the time where she felt as though she was stitching together different understandings and perspectives of history.