Clearwater by Whites Aviation

An original framed Whites Aviation painting of Clearwater.

Process of Painting

“A magical cocktail of aviation and photography … painted with cotton wool.”

Whites Aviation photographs are not colour prints. They are black and white photographs that were individually hand-coloured by women who worked in the Whites Auckland studio.

An intriguing aspect of White's hand-coloured works is that of uniqueness. Although printed, the act of colouring by hand rendered each one distinct. Often mounted on hard board, these works could be framed and presented in public or in the home. Some were enlarged to an enormous scale with considerable detail, possible due to the large glass plate negatives they were photographed on.

Whites employed ‘colouring women’ (actually called ‘colouring girls’ at the time) who hand painted the photographs using a length of grape vine with the tip wrapped in cotton wool dipped into tinned oil paint.  The delicate and intricate nature of the craft is explained in an article in The Women’s Weekly:

“The sea was washed with blue, highlights were added in green and a darker blue. Rangitoto was a combination of green and mauve for the base and blue and mauve at the top. Highlights were of raw sienna. The yachts were mainly scraped up with shadows on the sails and the hulls brown. The tree in the foreground was washed with a darkish green with the highlights of a paler tone of the same colour. The flowers were done last … For bush, four shades of green were used, several tones of yellow, browns and pinks….. For landscapes, Grace recalls Mr White describing the right colours, always ensuring clarity in the New Zealand light. The 1963 article also refers to photographers frequently bringing back samples, “such as the time Mr White returned from the South Island high country with a handful of tussock…. A photo about 35x50cm would take about one morning to colour. When the girls painted large murals, it wouldn’t be uncommon to work as a team, standing, sitting or climbing up on stools. Even then, big pieces could take many days to complete, nine in the case of a large Lake Taupo photograph worked on by four “girls” in 1963. “It was very important for people to have photographs of New Zealand on their walls in those days. And once Whites started selling, they went berserk everywhere. In my view, everybody bought them because there was nothing else like them at the time. There were some prints of Van Gogh’s sunflowers, Brugal’s paintings, Constable’s hay wain – but suddenly Whites was different. It was real, and the country we lived in,  and hand coloured. It absolutely took off.”

One gets the picture that it was complex work but, like most hard things, made to look easy by people at the top of their game.

Whites Aviation Ltd

Leo White captured some of the first images of Auckland from the air in 1921, beginning a lifelong passion for flying which he combined with his love of photography. By 1945 White established the now famous Whites Aviation Ltd to produce a series of popular illustrated publications of aviation history and aerial photography. In 1988, Whites Aviation was purchased by Air Logistics (NZ) Ltd (now GeoSmart).

Leo White

“He had enormous charm, charisma and integrity … [he had] friends from Prime Ministers through to caretakers. He was one of those lovely gentlemen of the era.

“He cut his teeth as probably New Zealand’s best known press photographer in the day. He was documented as being the mostly highly paid, he had a roving commission, the Herald gave him a new car every year to do what he wanted.”

In 1937 he decided he needed a change and set up a company which was a forerunner to Whites Aviation, but the outbreak of the war put paid to that and White headed off to document the war for the Royal New Zealand Air Force in the Pacific. 

Source: Alsop, P