The Artist’s Three Children

This affecting group portrait—formerly called The Morning Walk—is one of the artist’s largest paintings. It shows three of the children of Harry Linley Richardson and Constance Verrier Cooper (1879–1947). They are, left to right, Alan (1914–67), Barbara (1910–63), and Joan (1913–32). Given the apparent ages of the subjects, the piece was probably painted about 1916, when the artist was living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and working as Head of the Art Department at Wellington Technical School.

Members of Richardson’s family, including another daughter, Cynthia (1923–33), appear in a number of seminal works, such as Bathing the Baby (c. 1913–14) and Cynthia’s Birthday (1926–27), both at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū (69/107, 69/106), and In Fancy Dress (c. 1930, also known as Party, Christmas Eve), at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (1948-0005-3). Jane Vial has noted that ‘his descendants remember the strain of his demands on the children to pose and the cost of his painting to the household purse’.

It has been commented that Richardson’s family portraits possess a certain stiffness. It might equally be observed that they convey a sense of calm, stability, and plenty. The Artist’s Three Children is remarkable for its warm, dappled sunlight, a feature that takes on additional poignancy when one considers the likely date of production, partway through the First World War.