| Brief Description |
John Alexander Gilfillan's artist's box was built to hold painting and drawing equipment. It consists of a beautifully made mahogany box bound with brass, and with brass hinges and key plate. The key is missing. Inside the hinged lid is pasted a paper advertisement from the makers, Smith, Warner & Co.
It has five removable compartments inside, two of which have wooden lids. In the largest compartment is a supply of watercolour paint tablets, many un-used. A long narrow compartment holds ivory paper smoothers and an ivory paper knife, as well as pen handles, nibs, a compass, a tiny water pot and charcoal. A small jar contains pieces of amber. A small drawer at the front contains 11 ivory sheets, one of which has a portrait of a man painted onto it, plus two glass lenses and a small pad of pink paper.
The paint tablets are made by a range of suppliers: Smith, Warner & Co, Ackermanns, G R & Co, T J Morris and Blackman's.
Gilfillan, a notable artist of his period, had settled in Whanganui with his wife Mary and their six children in 1842. He bought 110 acres in the Matarawa Valley, moving into a small cottage that he had built in 1845. The property was attacked by a Māori raiding party from the upper Whanganui River in 1847. Mary and three of the children were killed. One of the surviving girls, Mary, was terribly injured and carried scars on her face and head for the rest of her life. The attack came to be known as the Gilfillan Massacre. It became clear later on that there was more to the attack than a random massacre, but that it was in response to the accidental shooting of a young Maori warrior shortly before by a naval cadet. The Gilfillans were, however, in the path of those seeking revenge and suffered horrifically for it.
Gilfillan and two of his surviving daughters moved to Sydney, where he used his Whanganui sketches as the basis of his famous painting "Interior of Putiki Pah", which was exhibited in the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.
|
