Thank you to the Stout Trust
25 November 2021
Over the next two years the portraits of Sir Robert and Lady Stout will receive remedial treatment funded by a grant from the Stout Trust. The Turnbull Endowment Trust applied for funding to support cleaning, treatment, glazing and structural repair to the paintings and frames of these fine portraits by Archibald Frank Nicoll, as part of the ‘Paintings in Perpetuity’ campaign.
We are most grateful to the Stout Trust for their generous support.
Curatorial staff from the library can now commission transportation to external conservators so that work can begin on the portrait of Sir Robert Stout.
The Stout Companion Portraits: Dr Oliver Stead
Archibald Frank Nicoll 1886 – 1953
Sir Robert Stout. 1919.
Oil on canvas
ATL Ref: G-823-3
Archibald Frank Nicoll 1886 – 1953
Lady Anna Stout. 1926.
Oil on canvas
ATL Ref G-830-1
The portraits of Sir Robert and Lady Anna Stout in the Alexander Turnbull Library collection were commissioned some seven years apart, in 1919 and 1926. Viewed together they document an extraordinary relationship, marriage, and two remarkable, contrasting, yet complementary, careers. Both portraits were painted by Archibald Frank Nicoll, OBE – leading exponent, teacher, and practitioner of fine art in New Zealand during the first half of the twentieth century.
The portraits were commissioned from Nicoll under different circumstances, both making their way by gift from the Stout family into a nascent national portrait collection being assembled by the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. The paintings subsequently passed to the National Art Gallery. In 1977 the portraits were transferred to the Alexander Turnbull Library. Ownership of the portrait of Lady Stout passed to the Turnbull in 1981, while the portrait of Sir Robert Stout remains on long term loan to the Turnbull from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
The circumstances of Nicoll’s commission for a portrait of Sir Robert Stout are uncertain but may be linked to the Academy’s initiative to commission and collect portraits of prominent New Zealanders. At the time of the painting’s completion in 1919, Stout was the long-standing Chief Justice of New Zealand, a veteran of New Zealand law and politics, having been Premier on two occasions. Among many other interests in social justice, Stout’s political career was notable for his support of women’s causes.
More certain are the circumstances leading to Nicoll’s portrait of Lady Anna Stout. A brass label attached to the painting’s frame bears the legend ‘Presented to Lady Stout by Wellington women in recognition of her life-long work for women and children, 11 April 1926’. Anna Paterson Stout (1858 – 1951), neé Logan, was an activist for women’s causes, including suffrage, throughout her adult life. She was supported in her views by her husband, Robert Stout, some fourteen years her senior. Though active in many associations dedicated to the advancement of women’s causes, Anna Stout’s efforts in this direction were at times curtailed, out of respect for her husband’s responsibilities in government. Visiting the United Kingdom 1909 – 1910 Anna Stout was especially influential in the women’s suffrage movement, as a representative of voting women in New Zealand.
Perhaps the leading professional portraitist of his generation, A F Nicoll had lost a leg while serving in the First World War. Returning to New Zealand, he became director of the Canterbury College School of Art. In the execution of his portraits of Sir Robert and Lady Anna Stout, Nicoll’s formal yet expressive painterly style is perhaps emblematic of the restrained yet assertive approach to the progression of social causes that Robert and Anna Stout brought to their respective political careers, and their many successes through navigating many diverse communities in their respective efforts.
Paintings in Perpetuity is an initiative from the Turnbull Endowment Trust.