During the 1980s, Douglas MacDiarmid and his brother Ron regularly corresponded about family history, exchanging information and photographs. Two fascinating old studio portraits of their parents and siblings triggered an idea to paint them in an idiosyncratic way.



Growing up, Douglas had known these aunts and uncles only slightly, if at all. His father Gordon and childhood hero Uncle Donald were too young to be included in a photograph of the three elder brothers – Arch, Campbell and Alex – as military cadets resplendent in their uniforms but it was “a piece of perfection in its genre” too good to overlook.

By sombre contrast, his mother Mary Tolme and much older sisters Margaret, Jean and Sibella were sadly mourning the unexpected death of their father in their Hawera home.

He set about capturing the emotion and feeling that a camera cannot possess or adequately express. “What work it entailed. In my whole life I’d never worked so hard or met such unexpected physical and mental challenge.”



The stunning result was ‘Mother & her Sisters’ and ‘My Father & his Brothers’ – to which were added the two missing younger lads Donald and Gordon, unmoustachioed to indicate their place in the family.

Both 130 x 97cm oil canvasses were painted in 1986, and caused a flurry of excitement when first shown in Paris at an exhibition of Greek landscapes. Douglas was kept busy on portrait commissions for some time to come.

French art historian Dr Nelly Finet included the portraits in a 2002 book on Douglas’ work because she admired them as much for their subject and composition as for the harmony of colours. The tight group around Mary and that undetailed emptiness beyond suggested both loss and their ancestral origins in the remote lsle of Skye, Scotland.

Gordon was the youngest of the MacDiarmid boys, set at the extreme right of the group. There is an adventurous sense of deering-do in their mood, sitting in the pergola of their father’s house in New Plymouth, transported for the occasion to some imaginary place overlooking the sea, as a constant reminder of their own forebears’ journey to New Zealand, also from Scotland.

In both portraits, Dr Finet sees the shadowy faces of those Douglas never really met, except in photos and stories, as a deft touch – projecting the poetry and mystery of remembering and ‘leaving the dream open’.

These enigmatic canvasses are in a private collection in Paris.