Kate Sperrey

When she died in 1893, aged 31, Eleanor Catherine Mair, better known as Kate Sperrey, was acclaimed as 'one of the best portrait painters New Zealand has produced. She was described as intelligent, well travelled and a good conversationalist.'

Eleanor Catherine Sperrey was born on 7 January 1862 in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. In 1863 her family moved to Dunedin in New Zealand, where her father, who had been a timber merchant, was engaged in the sub-treasurer's office as a clerk.

Her mother died In 1865. Kate began studies at Otago Girls' High School in 1873, and studied art with David Con Hutton, principal of the Otago School of Art. In around 1881 she traveled to Rome to study portraiture with Giuseppe Ferrari. Her study of an Italian goatherd won a gold medal in the Prix de Rome competition, and was considered her masterpiece. Before she returned to New Zealand, she studied in London and Paris.

In 1884 she set up an office in Wellington and became an official portrait artist, joining the New Zealand Art Students' Association the following year. The organization, based in Auckland, encouraged members to paint solely subjects having to do with New Zealand. In 1886, she moved her studio to Lambton Quay. She participated in numerous exhibitions including the Otago Art Society's shows in both 1886 and 1887, the New South Wales Art Society 1886 Sydney Town Hall exhibit, the Auckland Society of Art's exhibitions of 1887 and 1888, the Centennial Exhibition of 1889 in Melbourne and the South Seas Exhibition of Dunedin in both 1889 and 1890.

In 1886 Captain Gilbert Mair (1843-1923), been awarded the New Zealand Cross, sat for his portrait in Kate's Wellington studio on Lambton Quay. During the course of the sitting Mair and Sperrey sparked up a friendship, their common ground being the collecting of objects. Two years later, on 19 September 1888, the couple married at the Congregational Church in Bowen Street, Wellington. After their marriage they lived near Foxton, where Gilbert farmed. Mair had previously fathered two sons and a daughter with the Ngāti Tūwharetoa woman, Keita Kupa. Gilbert and Kate had two children, John Gilbert on 5 July 1889, who died in infancy, and Kathleen Irene, known as Airini. After her marriage Kate continued painting, signing her works as E. K. Mair. Airini, like her mother, became an artist, painting images of the many places she visited on her travels.

In 1889, Kate created paintings which earned first, second and third prizes, in the oil and water colour category of the Melbourne Fine Art Exhibit. Predominantly known as a portrait artist, she painted the likenesses of such figures as Sir Harry Atkinson, John Ballance, Sir William Fitzherbert, Sir George Grey, and James Macandrew, among many others. She was also renowned for her paintings of Māori subjects, some of which included Wairingiringi, a Ngāti Mahuta woman and her husband, Te Wahanui, a Ngāti Maniapoto tribal leader. In 1890, for New Zealand's Golden Jubilee, Musings in Maoriland, by Thomas Bracken was published outlining the colony's development of art and literature. The 400-page commemorative volume was illustrated with sepia sketches by Sperrey which were engraved in Nuremberg, Germany. Two of her last works were portraits of her own children.

Kate was often ill, and died at the age of 31 on 23 April 1893 at Wairau Hospital, Blenheim, where she had travelled for an operation. She buried in Wellington in the in Bolton Street Cemetery, beside her father. Her self-portrait is in the collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library and her most noted work, Italian goatherd, is in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Kate's obituary appeared in the New Zealand Herald (9 May 1893, p. 5) https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH18930509.2.24

THE LATE MRS. GILBERT MAIR The New Zealand Times, in its notice of the death of Mrs Gilbert Mair (Miss Kate Sperrey), gives the following particulars - "Her lingering and painful illness was borne with a courage and endurance rare in a delicate and fragile constitution such an characterised the accomplished and gentle souled lady too soon taken away. Only those who knew her intimately can understand the attractiveness of her nature, its simplicity, and her courage under long and severe physical suffering. The loss by her demise to the art of the colony is great. Not only did she possess superior ability as a painter, but as a sculptor she exhibited a power which, had she been spared, would have made a name for her in that department of art, as witness the terra cotta bust of her father, a life like portraiture moulded shortly after his death a few years ago. While but a young girl Miss Sperrey displayed a remarkable capacity for art. In colour, form and taste for natural scenery, represented in landscape and foliage, together with effective evidence of ability in figure-painting, she early showed the dawn of a talent which future study under celebrated masters in Italy and Pans developed in a marked degree. An early portrait of her young child-brother painted when she was only about 16, and a bush scene in water colours, with ferns and brushwood surrounding a bird's nest, painted about a year later, was remarkably true to nature. Subsequently, after her Roman and Parisian experience, on her return to New Zealand, she painted numerous portraits of celebrated colonists, including the late Sir William Fitzherbert, Mr. James McAndrew, of Dunedin (which was subscribed for by the people of Dunedin), Sir George Grey, Sir Harry Atkinson, the Hon. John Ballance, and various other prominent personages, besides numerous studies of Natives and native scenery. Among her productions was an Italian goatherd, taken from life, which in form, colour, and effect in detail, is considered her masterpiece. Mrs. Mair leaves two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, aged respectively four and two years, portraits of both of whom, in one group, were recently painted by their now departed mother.