Harry Courtney Archer

From the 1930s to the 1950s, Ōtautahi was home to a progressive arts and culture group that Peter Simpson has termed ‘Bloomsbury South’. Among its most prominent members were artists Rita Angus and Leo Bensemann. In February 1938, Bensemann and his lover (and later lifelong friend) Lawrence Baigent moved into a flat adjoining one where Angus was living at 97 Cambridge Terrace. The three met for meals and hosted parties together.

Bensemann and Angus often painted their friends, one of whom was the young Harry Courtney Archer (1918–2002). Archer owned works by both artists, including Angus’s Mount Maud (1938) and Untitled (Hop Kilns, Motueka) (1941), and Bensemann’s Pass in Winter (1971), all now in the collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. He also owned this vibrant portrait.

The painting reflects Bensemann’s interest in Renaissance portraits, in which figures are often placed against expansive landscapes, and Japanese art, particularly ukiyo-e woodblock prints, with their rhythmic lines and flat colour. It is not known whether the painting was a commission or a gift. Simpson has dated it to about 1939.[1] At this time, Archer was working at his family’s flour mill at Rangiora, and the background ostensibly shows this location. (Simpson suggests that the mountain is Maukatere Mount Grey.)

Like Angus and Bensemann, Archer was a pacifist. His father disapproved of his position, causing Archer to leave home and his job at the mill. Like other conscientious objectors, including Angus, he spent time at Pangatōtara and Riverside, in the Nelson region, during the Second World War. There, he engaged in horticultural labour that was not essential to the war effort.

After the war, Archer travelled to China, where he worked alongside Rewi Alley at the Shandan Bailie School. The objective of the school was to impart useful knowledge to a poor community using a ‘half work, half study’ system. A short biography of Archer notes that he quickly became ‘a convert to the school’s philosophies and way of life. He was impressed by the students, admired Alley’s ideals and practical approach, and felt totally at ease in the strong family environment which had been created at the school.’

Political tumult made life in China difficult. Nevertheless, Archer persisted at the school for several years. In 1953, he decided to return to New Zealand, due to his father’s failing health. Following his father’s death in 1955, he took over the flour mill. He maintained ties to China, but Aotearoa was his base for the rest of his life. He lived at Rangiora with his male partner, Chen Tan, and died in 2002.

Bensemann’s portrait of Archer connects with several other paintings in the Fletcher Trust Collection. The most obviously resonant work is Angus’s Dona Nobis Pacem, a paean to pacifism that refers to Pangatōtara and Riverside. Colin McCahon’s Pangatōtara Landscape No. 1 is aesthetically distinct but connects to the same social and artistic milieu.

Harry Courtney Archer is a strong example of Bensemann’s work. The artist was always more at home as a draughtsman, but the picture shows a growing confidence with paint that places it in league with other major portraits, such as Albion Wright (1947), in the collection of Te Puna o Waiwhetū. Bensemann suffuses the painting with symbolic content. Standing in a calm and fertile landscape, with an intelligent countenance and elegant hands resting on an implement, Archer becomes an emblem of peaceable life and labour.

[1] Peter Simpson, Fantastica: The World of Leo Bensemann (Tāmaki Makaurau: Auckland University Press, 2011), 56.