The two painters found they had a lot of friends and interests in common, a similar outlook, and got along prodigiously.

Her study has two faces, a man who is a world citizen but remains a kiwi at heart – a foot in both camps. One face looks forward, through a porthole to dolphins playing, the other looks back to a European street scene. And, below, a telling handwritten key…“Douglas MacDiarmid, the expatriate who had to leave in order to understand what it was he left. There was no other way – then”.

The idea of showing him as the “Irish God who looked both ways” came to Jacqueline as she painted.

MacDiarmid applauded the portrait for capturing “the legitimate duality of an expatriate’s conflicting (?) or harmonised loyalties. Given the vastness of experience involved in adapting to, say, Paris” after Taihape, and the consequent vastness of the world implied, she has projected something of what must be a terrible vision shared by all thinking people alive today. He also noted that: “It’s especially hard for a painter to paint another painter, in all conscience.”

“Your vision of two hemispheres, two aspects, have taken you an amazing distance indeed. Bravissima,” he wrote to thank her.

He first saw the painting as a photograph in Art New Zealand journal, and wished he could see it in the flesh; this did not happen until his next, and final, trip to New Zealand in 1996. Had he known there was another unrelated painting on the reverse side of the board, he would have greatly approved of Fahey’s recycling economy – nothing wasted is very much a MacDiarmid trait.

First five portraits at NZPG

Douglas was in distinguished company in this first group of portraits of prominent New Zealanders, internationally recognised in different fields – along with famous mountaineer and humanitarian Sir Edmund Hilary; Hollywood-feted cabaret and jazz singer Mavis Rivers, award-winning composer Lyell Cresswell; and celebrated opera singer Patricia Payne.

He was very supportive of the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in its infancy, and Judy Williams as hands-on founder, first secretary and curator. The two knew one another from their Canterbury University days, when they studied under philosopher Karl Popper in the war years when the man regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century lived in Christchurch.

Later, Douglas was approached to paint opera diva Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in her prime but this did not come to pass, as their schedules could not connect. However, he did contribute a insightful 2001 portrait of his cousin, Nobel Prize winning chemist Alan MacDiarmid to the gallery collection.

It is a source of great pride that the New Zealand Portrait Gallery has become one of the capital’s must-see art spaces – housed in the heritage Shed 11 at Customhouse Quay on Wellington’s waterfront – and even today entirely funded by donations and sponsorship.

MacDiarmid’s relationship with the gallery has turned full circle with the launch of his biography Colours of a Life – the life and times of Douglas MacDiarmid by Anna Cahill there on 12 July, 2018. In the supporting exhibition, this portrait of a man with two faces, two sexualities, dual allegiances straddling two hemispheres he was finally coming to terms with, takes pride of place. The painting also appears in his biography on page 346.

The New Zealand Portrait Gallery (NZPG) hosted the Colours of a Life exhibition in Wellington from 13 July to 23 September 2018 to celebrate the launch of Douglas MacDiarmid’s biography, Colours of a Life.

Curated by biographer Anna Cahill and gallery director Jaenine Parkinson, the exhibition featured works by and of Douglas MacDiarmid, including Portrait of Alan MacDiarmid (2001), Self portrait on wet paving stones (2010-13) and the record-breaking Woman and child in a room at night (1946), along with the portrait of MacDiarmid by renowned New Zealand artist Jacqueline Fahey.



Listen to the recording from the NZPG curator’s talk on Saturday 14 July 2018 to hear Anna Cahill in conversation with gallery director Jaenine Parkinson as they discuss the life and work of the Douglas MacDiarmid.