Duncan Darroch
His paintings reflected the spirit of the man.
Artist, botanist, mountain guide.Duncan Darroch (1888-1967) was born in Otago, raised in Milton, and was a sailor in the 1920s working on Union Steam Ship Company coasters visiting every port in New Zealand and travelling to Canada and Britain, painting during his journeys. He studied at the Canterbury School of Art in 1922 under Archibold Nicoll although he was largely self taught. 1928 was a farrier and then a ranger at Mount Cook. He lived at Mt Cook from 1926 until his death. He painted mountains and seascapes in an impressionist style and is represented in the Aigantighe (Timaru), Dunedin, Forrester (Oamaru), Hawkes Bay, Hocken (Dunedin), McDougall (Christchurch), University of Canterbury Christchurch), Sutter (Nelson), Te Papa (Wellington) galleries and at the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre, Hermitage. Painted in oils. He bequeathed his chalet, Tighnabruaich, at Mt Cook, to the New Zealand Forest and Bird Protection Society.
Mt Cook from the Hermitage 14x18" oil Mt Cook and Mueller Glacier 14x18" oil/board Mt. Cook & Mueller Glacier 36 x 46 oil on board Mountain lake scene 9x10" oil/board Mountain lakes scene 9x10" oil/board Mount Cook 15x19" oil/canvas/board Mount Cook 12.2x14.6in oil Mt Cook 16x23cm oil/canvas Mount Cook 65x83cm oil/canvas Est. $300-500 The Reflection of Mount Cook 16.5x22 oil/canvas/board Lake and Mountain Landscape 44x59 cm oil/board Hochstetter Icefall oil on canvas Lake Pukaki and Mt Cook fresh snow 82.5cm x 58.5cm Mt Cook and Lake Pukaki Price $650 in 2009 Mt Cook from Lake Pukaki oil on board Mt Cook "Tighnabruaich" 28x23cm signed and dated 1.4.59 The Reflection of Mount Cook 16.6x22cm oil/board The Reflection of Mount Cook 16.5x22cm oil/canvas/board The Reflection of Mount Cook 19 x 21.5cm oil on board MtCook from Lake Pukaki 170 x 210mm oil on board Mt Cook 16x23.5cm oil/canvas Mount Cook 39.5x49.5cm oil/canvas/board Mount Cook 65x83cm oil/canvas Snow capped Peaks 20x23 oil/canvas Lake and Mountain 44x59cm oil/board Mountain Lake Scene 23x27cm oil/board Mount Cook and Mueller Glacier 36x46cm oil/board Mt. Cook & Mueller Glacier 36 x 46 oil on board Glacier scene 33.5cm x 28cm oil Price $850.00 Glacier 25x28cm oil/board Mountain Lake 23x27cm oil/board Lake Mathieson and Mt Tasman 170 x 210mm oil on board The Three Sisters, Ben Nevis 27.5 x 36 oil on board The Earnslaw, Lake Wakatipu 35x42cm oil Price $895.00 At the Going of the Sun The Bow, Pamir 46x60cm oil on board Pamir End of Voyage oil painting Aigantighe Art Gallery, Timaru Pamir under full sail 36x54cm oil Pamir sails reefed 25.5x22cm Pamir Deck Scene 33x26.5cm oil on canvas Pamir off Godley Head, Lyttelton 53 x 35 cm Hills and Cloud, Hawaii 31x38cm oil/board Coastal Scene 24.4x37cm oil/board Coastal Scene 9.75x14.75in oil sold in Jan. 2005 $US201 Maori Chief "retinana Te Rua Poutu" 21.7x16.1in oil Portrait sold May 2007 $US95 Unloading sulphur boat 25cm x 18 cm
Charm of Mt. Cook, New Zealand / ... paintings by Duncan Darroch.
Publisher : Timaru [N.Z.] : Mount Cook and Southern Lakes Tourist Co., [1934] 8p chiefly col. ill. ; 23 x 29 cm pamphletTimaru Herald 5 Dec. 1967
Mr Duncan Darroch died in the Oamaru Hospital yesterday. He was 79. Mr Darroch, his picturesque chalet Tighnabruaich and its novel umbrella (set up beside his chalet, and where keas were fed by him night and morning) on the Glencoe Fan, near the Hermitage Hotel were as much part of the Mt Cook scene as the Alps themselves. He painted the extremes of nature - mountains and the sea, and in his lifetime he produced a multitude of canvases. He caught the moods of the mountains and he portrayed the sea as he found it during his many voyages round the coast of New Zealand, and to Canada and Scotland.
One painting - a scene of Mt Cook with the alpine after glow illuminating it- was bought by a tourist and subsequently donated to an art gallery in New York. The Aigantighe gallery in Timaru has 20 of his paintings which were gifted to the city by him. He turned his art on occasions to practical purposes, and part of a series depicting erosion caused by tussock and bush fires hangs in the office of the South Canterbury Catchment Board. Mr Darroch was born in Milton and was a descendant of the seafaring islanders of Jura, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. He lived most of his life in the mountains or on the sea. He joined the staff of the Hermitage in the 1920s to assist with the horses used on the tourist trip to the Ball Hut, and with the various changes of administration his work developed into taking parties of tourists out on the mountains.
His knowledge of botany and his powers of observation, together with his established reputation as a painter, were invaluable qualities for his work as a guide and companion. He always carried a sketching outfit in his pack Passing generations will remember his sparse kilted figure tramping the Tasman Glacier and the various tracks or stilled before an easel as he painted one of his mow famous mountain scenes. Mr Darroch was practically a self-taught artist. When he played his guitar keas would mob him. He also shoed horses at Mt Cook. His address was The Hermitage.
For a period he worked for the Union Steam Ship Company aboard its coasters. He was fascinated by the Pamir and he followed it around New Zealand, painting it on several occasions but never once sailing on it. Mr Darroch, never married, was appointed an honorary ranger of the Mt Cook National Park Board in 1954. Duncan loved New Zealand, its native birds and its native bush.
A painter of mountains, seas and ships.
Timaru Herald 9 Dec. 1967.
Duncan Darroch, Man of the Mountains by W. Vance.
Thousands of tourists photographed him on the glaciers with his tam-o-shanter, kilt and alpenstock. Duncan came to the Hermitage in the twenties, during the regime of R.LK. Wigley, whom he admired. Whenever I went to the Hermitage , my first port of call was Duncan's chalet to hear his dissertation on the evils of smoking, the dangers of fires, and the future of art. Then he would show me his piles of unfinished paintings, his new bird-feeding trough, then came a grand finale of piano-accordion playing. Duncan preferred solitude. Neither a grand home nor elegant clothes had any appeal. He went his own way, thought his own thoughts, and spoke his own mind, fearless of any man. The affinity with the mountains found expression in his paintings. With profits from his paintings he made generous donations to disabled seaman fiends and was especially interested in financially helping the building of lifeboats for the Goodwin Sands, England. He id a great deal in trying to conserve the Mount Cook vegetation. He cared for the bush, fed the birds, especially the keas, put up notices warning of the danger of fires, and spent his time in ceaseless activity trying to keep Mt Cook area as much as possible, in its native state. And in all his labours, he was attended by his companion - his faithful little dog. He was aware of the growing threat from deer and chamois and would often point out where natural regeneration had been destroyed by animals causing loss of tree cover and accelerated erosion.
TH - another article.
Conservationist and tree Lover by R. St. Barbe Baker.
Visitors to Mt Cook must be grateful to Darroch for the stalwart stand he took when there was threat to build in the line of the famous view of the mountain.
"Pamir End of Voyage" in Wellington Harbour, oil painting by Duncan Darroch. photo
The Pamir was a four-masted steel barque built in 1905 .
Bearings 1992 Volume 4 Number 3 Pages 12-14 Article :
Duncan Darroch and the Pamir ( Caldwell, Elizabeth ) Biographical sketch of
New Zealand painter Duncan Darroch and his fascination for the Pamir.
Memorial exhibition of oil paintings by the late Duncan Darroch.
"Mountains, Sea and Lakes" commencing 23rd June, 1969. McGregor Wright
Gallery...Wellington. [catalogue] Alexander Turnbull Library,
Wellington
MT COOK PAINTING RETURNED.
Timaru Herald 17 February 2004
A survivor of the second Hermitage fire half a century ago has returned to Mt
Cook. The painting of Mt Cook, by then resident artist Duncan Darroch, was saved
from the 1957 fire, but a hole was punched through one corner in the rescue
effort. Darroch was so upset by the damage that he refused to allow it to be
hung in the rebuilt Hermitage, and kept it under his bed for a couple of years
before selling it to an American visitor in 1959. Hermitage general manager and
Mt Cook Museum Trust trustee Denis Callesen said Darroch only allowed the woman
to buy it because she reminded him of the nurses during the war. The one metre
by 75cm painting has been in Hawaii ever since, but with its owner now moving to
a smaller unit, she offered it to the Mt Cook Museum Trust. Her daughter
Stephanie Kirkpatrick was in Mt Cook this week to hand over the painting to the
trust. The painting will hang in the hotel until the trust gets its own home.
Darroch lived in a cottage behind the Hermitage from 1920 until three months
before his death in 1967. A kilt and hobnail boots were his usual form of dress.
Mr Callesen said Darroch, whose work has developed quite a following, was very
particular about who he sold his paintings to. He would never sell a painting to
a person who smoked, and refused to allow the hotel to hang any of his works in
the rebuilt Hermitage as guests were allowed to smoke in the building. Most of
his work featured ships, especially the sailing barque Pamir, or landscapes of
the Mt Cook area.
AFFINITY FOR MT COOK REGION
Timaru Herald 24 June 2006
Hochstetter Icefall, oil on canvas by Duncan Darroch (1888-1967)
Given by the artist in 1963
Duncan Darroch was born in Milton, Otago, to parents newly arrived from
Scotland. He moved to Mt Cook in 1915 where he was a farrier (he shod the
horses) for the Mount Cook Company.
In the early 1920s Darroch worked for the Union Steam Ship Company visiting
every port in New Zealand and travelling to Canada and Britain, painting during
his journeys. He trained at the Canterbury College School of Art in 1922, but
was largely a self-taught artist preferring to go back to sea and painting what
he saw. When he returned to New Zealand in 1928, Darroch went back to Mt Cook
where he worked at the Hermitage, later becoming an honorary ranger for the
National Park and a well-known local character. He built a home and studio in a
cottage called "Tignabruaich" (the little house on the rise) which was designed
to resemble a ship's cabin. Mountains and the sea were the main subjects of
Darroch's work and he was well known as the "Mt Cook painter" for his many
versions of Aoraki. Also the huge sailing ship Pamir (one of the last of its
kind, as commercial shipping moved to propeller driven vessels) was almost an
obsession for Darroch, who followed the ship around New Zealand's ports between
the years 1939-45 and painted many canvasses of it. Darroch was not included in
South Canterbury painting circles at the time, being considered a bit of a self-
taught "rough diamond" but he was a highly accomplished artist and is long
overdue for a revival of appreciation. His work is Post-Impressionist in style,
portraying vivid colour and dramatic light. The Hochstetter Icefall is part of
the Hochstetter Glacier in the Mt Cook region, descending from the Grand Plateau
to the Tasman Glacier.
Twentieth Century Artists
South Canterbury
NZGenWeb Project
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