Lake Matheson Whites Aviation Painting
An original framed Whites Aviation painting of Lake Matheson in the South Island of New Zealand.
There is a small chip off the painting on one part of the painting, otherwise in good condition. More photos available on request.
Dimensions: mm (W) x mm (H)
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.
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).
Source: Alsop, P
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