The subject of a painting is not the important thing . . . what I am really on about, first and foremost is ORDER›sorting out, distilling, eliminating, ‘the struggle to make partial order out of chaos’.1 ELIZABETH STEVENS
Even today with the wealth of art monographs, catalogues and reference books produced in this country, Gil Docking’s 1971 publication Two Hundred Years of New Zealand Painting remains seminal. The fact it was reprinted twice (1975, 1980), and had a second and third edition (1980, 1982), confirmed its success at a time when New Zealanders were starved of information on the local scene. And, the two additional updates, chapters by historians Michael Dunn (1990) and Edward Hanfling (2012), are further evidence of its ongoing status as an important reference book. Following the…