By Roselyn Fauth A Painting That Stops You in Your Tracks.
Inspired by a Facebook post by the Aigantighe Art Gallery, you an also see her painting here: pressreader/the-timaru-herald (I haven't included her painting as I was unsure about the copyright).
Sometimes you stand in front of a painting and realise it carries more than just the scene on the canvas. It holds layers of story. Place. People. Memory. That’s what happened when I stopped in front of Mt Sefton by Esther Hope at the Aigantighe Art Gallery. It’s part of Aoraki Tangata Whenua, an exhibition of Southern Alps landscapes from the gallery’s collection, now in its final days. The brushwork is delicate, yet the mountain feels powerful. Freezing. Alive.
When I read about Esther Hope, I feel a thread of connection to my own life. She grew up with art at the heart of her home, guided by a parent who understood the world through images. Her mother held a paintbrush and her grandfather held a camera. My father holds a camera and my mother creates with her hands through cross stitch. I think both Esther and I learned early how to notice the way light falls across a landscape, or how a story or a message can be shared through art. That shared inheritance of creativity feels like a link that crosses generations.
To me, Esther’s life and art show that the landscapes we inherit are shaped by both nature and people, and that when you truly know a place, it changes how you see and represent it. Her story invites us to look beyond the paint… to see a woman shaped by the high country and her family’s place in its history. Someone who used the opportunities of wealth and education to travel, study, serve, and paint. What we’re left with is not just a mountain in watercolour, but a record of a moment in time, framed by the social and economic world that made it possible.
Read on to learn more about this painter’s story.
Esther had roots in two worlds: Pasture and Creativity
Esther was born Esther Studholme Barker in 1885 in Woodbury, a small rural settlement near Geraldine. On her father’s side she was the granddaughter of Dr Alfred Barker, a trained doctor best remembered for his photographic record of early Christchurch. On her mother’s side she was the granddaughter of Michael Studholme, one of the first European runholders in the Waimate and Mackenzie districts.
That dual inheritance, one steeped in the hard work of high-country farming and the other in the snapping of images through a lens, seems to have met in her work. She grew up with a mother, Emily, who was an accomplished amateur artist and her first teacher. I can imagine them sitting by a sunny window, brushes and paints at hand, learning to see not just with the eyes but with patience and care. Those early lessons in looking closely stayed with her.
I was curious... How a Canterbury Girl Ended Up in London Art Circles?
Esther’s schooling at Miss Bowen’s in Christchurch gave her a strong start, and she studied with Captain Edwyn Temple and Margaret Stoddart, one of New Zealand’s leading impressionist painters. Stoddart encouraged her to draw directly from the natural world, to work with light and atmosphere rather than simply recording the outline of things.
In 1912 Esther sailed to England to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, learning from teachers like Henry Tonks, John Peter Russell and Ambrose McEvoy. Later she continued at the Chelsea College of Arts with Ernest Borough Johnson and Frank Spenlove Spenlove. For a young woman from rural Canterbury, this was a leap into a bustling international art scene, surrounded by influences from across Europe.
In 1914 she was painting in Brittany when the First World War broke out. Travel home was impossible at first, and when she finally returned to England she set painting aside to join the war effort. She worked as a nurse aide, drove heavy supply lorries between London’s docks and the city, and later served in Malta as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse.
These were intense, noisy and physically demanding environments, nothing like the open spaces she grew up in. I often wonder whether the contrast made her even more attuned to stillness when she returned to the Mackenzie. Her later landscapes seem to breathe. They are quiet, spacious and unhurried, almost as if she was painting herself back into peace.
When Esther returned to New Zealand in 1919 she married Henry Norman Hope and settled at Grampians Station in the Mackenzie Country. This was more than a postcard setting, it was a working high-country run with big skies, sharp light and long winters. Life here meant proximity to the very landscapes she would come to paint most often.
Grampians had been first stocked in 1860 and was one of the early high-country stations that transformed the Mackenzie’s tussock plains into sheep country. It was isolated, challenging and beautiful. Living there gave Esther the kind of day in day out knowledge of the Mackenzie that cannot be picked up on short visits. She knew the changes in light from morning to evening, how snow settled on the ridges, and where the colours shifted in spring and autumn.
Her Mt Sefton shows the jagged, snowy peaks of the Aroarokāehe range, south of Aoraki Mt Cook, with icy rocks in the foreground. There are no people, no buildings, just the mountain, solid and commanding. The snow is not soft and pretty, it is crisp and hard edged. The rocks look cold to the touch.
This is not a romanticised postcard scene. It is a portrait of a mountain that has presence, a mountain you have to meet on its own terms. That is what makes it feel so real. It is painted by someone who knew what it was to live with mountains like this as neighbours.
In 1956, after decades at Grampians, Esther and Henry retired to Timaru. That same year the Aigantighe Art Gallery was founded by Helen Grant. It is fitting that the gallery, created to celebrate South Canterbury’s art and heritage, now holds Mt Sefton in its permanent collection. In recent years it has been shown in Aoraki Tangata Whenua, surrounded by other works that honour the Southern Alps and their surrounding whenua.
When I stand in front of Mt Sefton in the gallery I am reminded that Esther’s landscapes are more than just scenes. They are the product of a life deeply lived in a particular place, shaped by both opportunity and challenge.
Why Esther and Her Art Matters
Esther exhibited widely at the Royal Academy in London, the Paris Salon, the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour and here at home with major art societies from Auckland to Otago. Her work is now in Te Papa, Christchurch Art Gallery and the Aigantighe.
But her importance is not just about where her paintings hang. It is about how they hold the Mackenzie as it was in the early and mid 20th century, before glaciers retreated and the land use changed. They are records of a landscape in time, made by someone who both loved it and understood it.
It is easy to romanticise the past when we look at art, but paintings like Mt Sefton carry a wider story, the beauty, the history and the choices that shaped them. Esther Hope did not just paint what she saw. She painted what she knew. The wildness, the stillness, the ties between people and place. Decades later her work can still pull us in, asking us to see with the same depth and care. And maybe that is her greatest legacy, that we walk away not just having looked at a painting, but having felt the life that shaped it.
“Standing in front of Mt Sefton, I am grateful that the Aigantighe holds this painting in a public collection. It means I can stand here, a century after Esther painted it, and feel that thread of connection to her life, her art, and the place we both call home. Without galleries like this, so much of our regional story would be hidden away in private hands, and moments like this would be lost.
Standing in front of Mt Sefton is like standing at the edge of the Mackenzie itself, with all that light, all that space, all that history. Esther Hope did not just paint what she saw, she painted what she knew. The wildness, the stillness, the ties between people and place. Her brushstrokes carry not just colour and line, but the imprint of a life lived with the land. And maybe that is the real power of her work, that decades later it can still pull us into her world and ask us to see our own with the same depth and care.
I am not an art critic and I do not have institutional training. I just really love art, being curious, and looking closer. This is my own personal reflection and I hope you enjoyed this blog. Raising the awareness of our artists, and particuarly women who have lived in South Canterbury and how their lives have made ripples into our own.”
— Roselyn Fauth
Side Quest: What was the Studholme Family Lineage
Birth Name: Esther Studholme
Birth: 1885, Woodbury, near Geraldine, New Zealand
Mother: Emily Studholme (née McLean) – A skilled artist in her own right, she encouraged Esther’s early creativity. Emily came from a well-educated background and married into one of Canterbury’s most influential pastoral families.
Father: John Studholme – One of the sons of Michael Studholme, a pioneer of the Mackenzie Country and founder of Te Waimate Station.
This makes Esther a granddaughter of Michael Studholme, the first European settler to establish sheep runs in the Waimate/Mackenzie region. Michael was well known for his partnership with other pastoralists in the early colonial period, and his story overlaps with many early South Canterbury station histories you’ve been documenting.
You can learn more about Esther Hope here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Hope
Side Quest: What Resonates With Me in Esther’s Story – What We Have in Common and What Her Life Teaches Me About My Own
When I read about Esther Hope, I feel a thread of connection to my own life. She grew up with art at the heart of her home, guided by a parent who understood the world through images. Her mother held a paintbrush, and her grandfather held a camera. My father holds a camera and my mother is very creative mostly through her cross stich. I think that both Esther and I have learned early how to notice the way light falls across a landscape or how a story or a message can be shared in art. That shared inheritance of creativity feels like a link that crosses generations, joining two artists like myself and her.
I feel a connection to Esther by our sense of place. Esther belonged to South Canterbury through generations of family, and I was born here too, my children are 6th generation Timaru-vians. We both know what it means to live inside a landscape and how that influences, inspired and shapes the way we see and what we choose to create.
When thinking about Esther and I, there are differences as well. Esther’s heritage was entirely colonial, rooted in the settler families who claimed and worked the land. My own family is a mix of long New Zealand roots on my father’s side and a more recent arrival from the Netherlands on my mother’s side. That combination gives me both a different perspective and knowledge of local history and the fresh curiosity of someone whose family has also looked at this land with new eyes. While she painted the places she knew best, I often find myself telling their stories, especially those that may have been left out in her time.
Her life reminds me how much our beginnings shape our work. Esther’s background gave her the means to study in London, to live and paint in the Mackenzie, and to have her art shown on international stages. My opportunities are different. I can connect art with community, weave together multiple perspectives, and share stories that show the complexity of this region. Looking at her story makes me ask how I will use my own place in the world, and how my work might also become part of the lasting record of the place I call home.
Side Quest: How Did Her Upbringing Shape the Artist She Became?
Esther grew up in Woodbury, a small rural settlement near Geraldine, surrounded by the legacies of two influential colonial families. On her father’s side, she was the granddaughter of Dr Alfred Barker, a trained doctor whose photography helped document Christchurch’s early years. On her mother’s side, she was the granddaughter of Michael Studholme, one of the first European runholders in the Waimate and Mackenzie districts. Her mother, Emily Studholme, was also an artist and her first teacher. With pastoral heritage on one side and a visual, documentary tradition on the other, was it inevitable that she would grow up seeing the land not only as a place to live, but as something to capture and share?
Side Quest: Why Is Esther Hope’s Work Recognised?
Esther Hope’s reputation rests on more than just her skill with watercolour and gouache, although she was a master of both. Her landscapes of the Mackenzie Country carry an authenticity born from living there for decades at Grampians Station, experiencing its light, seasons, and weather firsthand. She translated that knowledge into paintings that capture both the beauty and the scale of the high country — something not easily achieved in such a fluid, unforgiving medium.
She also reached beyond local recognition. Exhibiting at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Paris Salon, and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour, she placed herself among the notable New Zealand artists of her generation. Her paintings now form part of the country’s cultural record, preserving views of the Mackenzie and Southern Alps as they appeared in the early–mid 20th century, before many of the environmental changes that have followed.
Her work is held in major collections including Te Papa, Christchurch Art Gallery, and the Aigantighe Art Gallery. These are not just beautiful landscapes — they are records of place and time, created by an artist whose life connected the pastoral heritage of South Canterbury with an international stage.
See one of her paintings here: https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/collection/69-58/esther-studholme-hope/mackenzie-country and here https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/360777275/treasures-aigantighe-mt-sefton-esther-hope
Side Quest: What Brings Her Work to the Aigantighe?
Today, Mt Sefton hangs in the Aigantighe Art Gallery, part of its permanent collection. How did it get here? After decades at Grampians Station in the Mackenzie, Esther and her husband retired to Timaru in 1956 — the same year the Aigantighe was founded by Helen Grant. It feels fitting that a gallery built to celebrate art and heritage in South Canterbury would become home to her work. The Aigantighe now holds Mt Sefton not just as a landscape, but as part of the region’s story, painted by someone who lived and breathed its high-country air.
Side Quest: Which Painting Has the Aigantighe Acknowledged?
The Aigantighe Art Gallery has recognised Mt Sefton by Esther Hope as part of its permanent collection (Accession no. 2004.8). Recently featured in the exhibition Aoraki Tangata Whenua, the work sits among other Southern Alps landscapes that celebrate the majesty of Aoraki and its surrounding whenua. In this painting, Hope shows the snowy, angular peaks of Mt Sefton in the Aroarokāehe range, south of Aoraki/Mt Cook, with icy rocks in the foreground. It’s a study in wildness, painted by someone who knew the high country’s beauty and challenges from the inside. The gallery’s acknowledgement of this work places it not only as a treasured landscape but as part of South Canterbury’s artistic heritage.
Side Quest: Who Was Esthers mother, Emily Studholme—and How Did She Shape Esther’s Vision?
Emily Studholme, also known as Emmeline Violet or “Emmie,” was the daughter of pioneering settlers at Te Waimate Station and one of ten siblings born into the Studholme family in early colonial South Canterbury. She married John Matthias Barker (often called Jack) in 1882 and raised her family in rural Woodbury, not far from Geraldine and Ashburton. Emily was an accomplished amateur artist and, importantly, the first teacher to her daughter, Esther. In 1893 she signed the Women’s Suffrage Petition as “Emily Barker” of Ashburton, although by that time she was living in Waihi, Woodbury. It is easy to imagine young Esther standing beside her mother, brush in hand, learning to truly see the land around them—not just as nature, but as a story waiting to be told in watercolour.
Sources:
https://ns2.thepeerage.com/p58766.htm
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/suffragist/emily-barker
https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/esther-studholme-hope
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/182138679/emmeline-violet-barker
https://www.tumgik.com/tag/Emily%20Barker%20%28nee%20Studholme%29
Side Quest: Who was her tutor Margaret Stoddart?
Margaret Stoddart was one of New Zealand’s most respected painters, best known for her watercolours of flowers and landscapes. She was born in 1865 in Diamond Harbour, Canterbury, and studied at the Canterbury College School of Art before spending about a decade in Europe from the late 1890s to 1906. There she was influenced by the Impressionist movement, especially while working in artists’ colonies in France and England. Stoddart returned to New Zealand and became a leading figure in Canterbury’s art community, teaching and mentoring many younger artists — including Esther Hope in 1907.
While she is often remembered for her botanical work, Stoddart was also deeply engaged with plein air painting and was part of the movement that encouraged New Zealand artists to take inspiration from the natural world directly, rather than copying from photographs or imported European models. Her guidance to Esther to “look to the natural world for inspiration” came from her own practice and philosophy.
Side Quest: What was the Slade School of Fine Art?
The Slade School of Fine Art is one of the most prestigious art schools in the world, part of University College London (UCL).
It was founded in 1871 with a donation from Felix Slade, a wealthy philanthropist who wanted to make high-quality art education more widely accessible. From the start, the Slade was known for being progressive. It offered equal training for women and men at a time when most art schools were heavily gender-segregated or restricted women’s access.
The school has a strong tradition of emphasising drawing from life, technical skill, and artistic experimentation. Many well-known artists studied there, including Gwen John, Augustus John, Dora Carrington, Stanley Spencer, and later Paula Rego and Rachel Whiteread.
For Esther Hope to study at the Slade in 1912 meant she was in the heart of London’s art scene, exposed to avant-garde movements, international exhibitions, and a network of leading artists and teachers. It was a rare opportunity for a New Zealander at that time, especially for a woman.
If you like, I can also work this into your blog so it adds weight to the sense of privilege and opportunity she had. That would deepen the reader’s understanding of how exceptional her training was.
Side Quest: Was Esther Hope Privileged?
It’s a question worth asking. Esther was born into two prominent colonial families — the Barkers, with their ties to early Christchurch cultural life through Dr Alfred Barker’s photography, and the Studholmes, who held vast high-country runs in South Canterbury. That kind of background opened doors. Education at Miss Bowen’s School, private art lessons with respected teachers, the means to study in London and Paris, and the freedom to paint subjects of her own choosing — these were opportunities far beyond the reach of most women in early 20th-century New Zealand.
But privilege doesn’t cancel out skill or determination. It shapes the starting point. The landscapes she painted are not just records of a place, they are also shaped by the advantages that allowed her to travel, to learn, and to keep painting. Which leaves us with a bigger question — when we admire the art, are we also willing to notice the conditions that made it possible?
Side Quest: How Might the War Have Changed Her?
In 1914, Esther was painting in Brittany when the First World War broke out. Her return to England was delayed, and when she finally made it back, she left the studio behind for the war effort — working as a nurse aide, driving heavy supply lorries between London’s docks and the city, and later serving in Malta as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse.
What does that kind of experience do to an artist? The noise, the urgency, the relentless movement, the proximity to loss — it must have been a world away from the quiet of Woodbury or the Mackenzie plains. I wonder if that is why, after the war, her landscapes seem drawn to stillness. No crowds. No machinery. Just the long sweep of tussock, the clean light of snow, and the calm permanence of mountains. Perhaps the high country became, for her, the truest form of peace she knew.
Side Quest: Did She Die Married — and Did She Have Children?
Esther married Henry Norman Hope in Woodbury in 1920, and they spent much of their life together at Grampians Station before retiring to Timaru in 1956. She died there in 1975 at the age of 89, and there is no record of the couple divorcing, so she appears to have remained married until her death. There is also no record of her having children, so her legacy lives on through her paintings and the stories of the places she loved, rather than through direct descendants.
Side Quest: What’s the Story of Grampians Station and Why It Mattered to Her?
Grampians Station was in the Mackenzie Country, set in the rugged Grampian Mountains between Lake Benmore and the upper Waitaki Basin in inland South Canterbury.
Grampians Station wasn’t just where Esther and Henry made their home. It carries deep roots in Mackenzie Country’s high-country legacy. The station was first stocked back in 1860, marking it as one of the early runs carved into this rugged landscape. Today, its former pastoral lease—spanning thousands of hectares—is part of a tenure review agreement that has returned a large block of land to public conservation, preserving the wild beauty of the Grampian Mountains and their surroundings.
When I think about Mt Sefton and Esther Hope’s life, I see more than a painting. I see her deeply rooted in a station that was itself part of pioneering history. It wasn’t just where she lived. It was a place shaped by people and time… and now, a place returning to nature. That kind of story, I believe, paints as much of a picture as her watercolours.
Sources:
https://digitalnz.org/records/54442162
https://www.wildernessmag.co.nz/new-doc-land-created-in-mackenzie-country
Side Quest: Was Grampians Station Significant?
Grampians Station was first stocked in 1860, making it one of the early high-country runs in the Mackenzie Country. Stations like this were part of the wave of pastoral settlement that transformed the region’s tussock grasslands into sheep country, anchoring the economy and changing the land. Grampians was known for its dramatic setting in the Grampian Mountains, between Lake Benmore and the upper Waitaki Basin, where winters were harsh, soils thin, and isolation a fact of life.
For decades it was a working sheep station, producing wool and meat that fed New Zealand’s export trade. In more recent times, the station’s pastoral lease went through a tenure review that saw a large part of it returned to public conservation land, recognised for its ecological and recreational value. In a way, the story of Grampians mirrors the wider history of the Mackenzie — from pioneering sheep runs to a more complex balance of farming, heritage, and protection of wild places.
Sources:
https://digitalnz.org/records/54442162
https://www.wildernessmag.co.nz/new-doc-land-created-in-mackenzie-country