Portrait of May Smith

Edward Scroggie has only recently been identified as the painter of this portrait. In the course of completing her master’s thesis Diane Burgess discovered that May Smith secretly married the English artist in 1935, although the union did not last and the two divorced in 1940.

With its concentration of yellow tones the portrait captures something of the vitality and creativity of the New Zealand artist. She is best known for her portrait Characterisation in Colour 1941, which uses colour expressively rather than descriptively, but was also a noted fabric designer, illustrator and teacher. (Intimate Portraits, 2005)

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