Portrait of a Maori Student

Margaret Thompson studied at the Elam School of Art in the late 1930s and early 1940s, where she embraced the figurative realism taught by her tutor, Lois White. The economic hardships of the Great Depression had created divisions across New Zealand, and tensions were heightened by the onset of World War II. Students at Elam were actively engaged in addressing issues of the day, and Thompson was deeply involved in the nascent social realism movement. She was also influenced White’s portraiture, as seen in Thompson’s own painting Portrait of a Maori student, 1946. White, along with Elam’s director AJC Fisher, emphasised a thorough practice of life drawing, tonal modelling, and a respect for Renaissance art. In Portrait of a Maori student, a young man is captured gazing downward in a contemplative state of repose. The painting is intimate in scale, with the figure’s head dominating the composition. He is dressed in a black shirt, possibly a school uniform or an artist's smock. Margaret Thompson has used meticulous tonal modelling to depict the head, with soft shading adding depth.

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