Garden with Child Playing in Sandpit

This fine, intimate painting is typical of Maud Sherwood’s work. She mostly painted in watercolours, favouring a dark palette using deep greens and blues others shied away from. She often chose to paint shady locations surrounded by bright sunlight, to allow her to explore her abilities as a painter of shadow.

The baldly descriptive title of this work is likely one that an art auctioneer thought up on the spur of the moment. Sherwood often gave her paintings poetic titles, which reflected her feelings about the subject she chose to paint. In this aspect, she reflected her training and the prevailing fashion for an expressive art.

Artists of Sherwood’s day were admired not so much for the ideas their works conveyed but rather for the emotions they communicated to the viewer. Sherwood preferred to concentrate on feelings associated with domestic repose rather than the grander responses evoked by Aotearoa’s scenery.