Elizabeth and Ian Mason have packed a great deal into their 80-odd
years and into their art collection, finds Clare Henry.
WHEN Elizabeth and Ian Mason talk about their ''collection of a
lifetime'' it's not just words -- and not just one lifetime. Elizabeth
reaches into a great drawer and comes up with paintings from the 1830s
by her great-great-grandmother.
''Moreover,'' she says proudly, ''all my three children were brought
up within the order of artistic sanctity!'' But then too so was she, and
her mother, as far back as Granny McIndoe from Rothesay who painted
eight precise and very lovely studies of fruit, before packing them
carefully and setting off with her printer/publisher husband on a ship
for New Zealand. ''They were nonconformist. His father was Provost of
Rothesay. The spirit of these women. Setting sail into the unknown for
weeks on end with small children,'' exclaims Elizabeth admiringly.
Art continued to play its part. When Elizabeth's father died, her
mother Sarah became art teacher at Archerfield School near Dunedin.
Sarah was the first pupil at Wellington Art College under their first
teacher, Glasgow Boy James Nairn, who started off in Lenzie, and was one
of the leaders of the pack until he left for New Zealand in 1889.
''My mother got a glimpse of the French Impressionism via Nairn, and
wanted to see the real thing. Eventually she saved up #1000 in guineas
to sail from Christchurch to Paris with her friend Frances Hodgkins --
who's the only New Zealand woman painter in the Tate. But then she met
the handsome Scotsman John McIndoe in Dunedin. She had good legs -- like
me. He went back to Wellington and built a house for her. It proved
irresistible. She cancelled her plans for Paris and married my father.''
Mason's was an ambitious family. Her elder brother became the famous
plastic surgeon, Sir Archibald McIndoe. ''I wanted to be a painter but
it wasn't allowed. My mother thought I might 'get mixed up with men', as
she put it.''
So instead Elizabeth Mason went to Girton College, Cambridge, to study
zoology and later started collecting pictures. Her ''collection of a
lifetime'' includes works by Pat Douthwait, Margaret Morris (''I
attended her pregnancy classes in Glasgow!''), Fionna Carlisle, and
autumn trees by Sir Nicky Fairbairn.
At university she met Ian Mason who became a world expert on animal
breeding. ''I saw he was that rarity: a good man.'' Now both over 80,
they travel a great deal, and always have, beginning when Elizabeth went
to Italy to study prawns, then joined Ian in Algeria where they got
married.
Elizabeth's life continues to read like a novel: Tahiti for her
eighteenth birthday in the 1920s (her mother's watercolours of the
tropical palms and beaches provide a permanent reminder); then the
first-ever tourist visit to Russia for #18 all in. (''It was extremely
cheap even then.'') Long trips to Greece where the family now own no
less than three houses, and 10 years in Rome when Ian was with the World
Health Organisation and Elizabeth made the costumes for Noel Coward's
Bittersweet. ''I have had a very adventurous life. And it's all recorded
in a composite picture -- including a passion flower -- Ian commissioned
in 1989 for her 80th birthday from Tom Wilson.
''Our first purchase was a Shakespearean scene by Alex Zyw. It cost
#50. Ian was earning very little in the zoology department. I was
demonstrating three times a week for which I was paid 15 shillings. It
took us a year to pay for it. I like its subject, the theatricality, its
design and colour. I had a feeling I wouldn't tire of it. Fifty pounds
was quite a lot of money in the early 1950s. I must have wanted it
badly. We've lived with it for all these years and still like it. A
wonderful test of a good picture.''
The next picture, Miracle of Cana, or, as Ian calls it, the
wine-making picture, is by Zelko Kujandzic, a Yugoslav trained as an
icon painter. ''He grinds his own colour. It's not a religious picture
but it does look like an icon.''
Perhaps her most prestigious paintings are the Bellany and two early
oils by Elizabeth Blackadder. ''I had two Bellanys. I gave one to Ricky
Demarco for one of his art auctions when he was in debt. I must have
been mad!'' The Blackadder landscapes from the 1960s ''encapsulate my
two favourite kinds of life: one rich, lush, Mediterranean: the other
pale, cold, Scottish, with a distant church. It reminds us of our home
in Auchtiebuie.''
The Masons have several works acquired from Ricky Demarco over the
years. ''I'm a great Ricky fan. We support his aims. We got our 1968
Neagu picture, our 1967 Ian McKenzie Smith, Erland Brown's picture,
which provides a good journey for the eye, and much more from Ricky.''
They also support the very young and buy from art college shows.
Other treasured pictures include Chagall's drypoint of The Daughters
of Lot; Will Maclean's early oil of a large wave, skate and wheelhouse,
''which speaks tragedy to me''; Edward Gage's landscape; a decorative
David Michie (''which gives me joy''); Peter Bourne's House on the Hill;
Lys Hansen's vigorous female; Anne Gordon's blue flowers; a tiny
Philipson; George Garson's 1966 tile mural (''he taught at Glasgow. I
liked him very much'') and Jack Knox's Third Eye retrospective.
''It's very Matisse, luscious food captured with a wonderful economy.
Cost us #25.''
Even the kitchen is full of pictures: including a Michael Windle.
Their most recent buy, a Steven Campbell, titled Children of the
Mermaid, was acquired from Glasgow's Hardie Gallery just before
Christmas. ''It's so gentle, a lovely quality of paint -- just
wonderful.''
TIP OF THE WEEK
''YOU must decide to buy your picture on merit, not on the name of the
artist or even on the subject. You can also wear art: sport style with a
certain elegance. Art should be fun,'' says Elizabeth Mason.
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