Our 2008 Important, Early & Rare auctions featured a special section of paintings by some of New Zealand's most widely recognised and respected landscape painters. The 2009 sales will also include this popular category by artists who have contributed to New Zealand's art history. In a bid to "encourage artists to paint the essential character of the New Zealand Scene and the ways of life of its people" entrepreneur, Sir Henry Kelliher founded the Kelliher Art Award in 1956. Whilst works painted for the Award, and collected by Kelliher, were often overlooked by modernist artists and critics of their era, they have always been extremely popular with the New Zealand public. The 1976 Kelliher Art Awards and exhibition attracted over 10,000 patrons to the Hastings City Cultural Centre, an extraordinary response from a provincial town with a population then of just 35,000. Over the past few years International Art Centre has seen growing market response to works by these regional painters, a trend we fully expect to continue.