Land Breeze

Nugent Welch was a member of the Wellington Art Club, founded by James McLauchlan Nairn in 1892 and associated with Pumpkin Cottage at Silverstream, near Whakatiki Upper Hutt. Like other members of the club, Welch preferred to paint in the open air, directly from nature. He was interested in the movement of clouds over a landscape, sometimes producing brooding atmospheric works which did not find as ready a public as his sunnier paintings did. His watercolours were always less adventurous than his oils, probably because he tended to rely on tried and tested conventional formulas when painting them.