Beauty in Unlikely Places

A unique feature of mid-twentieth-century New Zealand painting was the contribution by two Auckland brothers, John and Charles Tole. The pair, who had no formal training and who lived together and painted similar subjects in similar styles, have been hailed as ‘hardy souls’ who ‘kept the flag of painting flying through some very lean years for New Zealand art’.¹ The Toles ably illustrated the challenges faced by local artists, such as dealing with overseas developments—cubism in particular—which were necessarily absorbed through second-hand sources.

A major influence on the pair was fellow Auckland artist John Weeks (1888–1965), leading to what Avenal McKinnon has described as a ‘Weeksian aura of filtered Cubism’ in their work.² Weeks encouraged their interest in urban and industrial landscapes, and the Toles were among a number of Auckland-based painters who, in the words of Gordon H. Brown, had ‘a shrewd eye for the pictorial possibilities of the commonplace’.³ Their interest in the built environment may have been encouraged by their architect brother George Tole, whose designs included St Michael’s Catholic Church, Remuera, several cinemas and the Mission Bay fountain.⁴ John and Charles also painted still-lifes, but it was their preference for less likely subjects, such as abattoirs, fertiliser works, farm sheds and oil tanks, that is the focus of this article.

The Toles were sons of Mr D.A. Tole, Commissioner of Crown Lands at Auckland. Elder brother John (1890–1967) was educated at Auckland Grammar and, after qualifying in law at Auckland University, practised as a solicitor.⁵ His only art training was a ‘short period in boyhood’ under Walter Wright (1866–1933), the landscape painter who, with his older brother Frank (1860–1923), had come from England in 1877.⁶ An early public showing for John was at the Auckland Society of Arts in 1925 when his still-life, Begonia, received this qualified praise: ‘there is some good work on the bowls and other accessories but the flower itself is not quite so satisfactory’.⁷ But it was not until 1939, by which time he was approaching 50, that John began exhibiting regularly.⁸

Younger brother Charles Tole (1903–1988) was educated at Auckland’s Sacred Heart College and the University of Auckland, and subsequently At an Otago Art Society exhibition in 1935, one of Charles’ paintings indicated the approach that shortly would engage the brothers. Referred to as both the ‘decorative’ and ‘patterned’ landscape, and owing much to John Weeks, it involved the abstraction of natural features and man-made objects and their combination into a coherent and harmonious whole. Charles’ was identified by the as a ‘patterned landscape’ and singled out for its bold shapes and predominance of red roofs. It was also said to recall the ‘decorative’ experiments of influential nineteenth-century French artist Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898), whose murals were distinguished by simplified forms, flatness of the picture plane and rhythmic use of line. It was further suggested that Charles’ entries in that 1935 exhibition should ‘not be lost to sight, but collected for the public as stages of formation of a tradition of art in this country’. The following year’s Auckland Society of Arts’ Autumn Exhibition included a large number of paintings of the buildings of Auckland, by now a popular topic for the Toles, and Charles’ was hailed as ‘an extraordinarily successful arrangement of rich colours’.