Provenance: Dick Family Collection, Wellington Acquired Circa 1969

Previously in the collection of the late W S Baverstock, Christchurch

Ref: Auckland City Art Gallery, 1959, exhibition catalogue p. 24.

Exhibited: Canterbury Society of Arts, Retrospective Exhibition June 5 - 29, 1951, cat. no. 39.

Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, 1963, cat. no. 48

Illustrated p 118 Van der Velden Volume II A Catalogue Raisonné, T L Rodney Wilson, Chancery Chambers Publishers, Sydney, 1979 Cat. no. 2.1.2.4

This wonderful example of van der Velden's work, together with one or two examples of the Otira Gorge in the Auckland and Christchurch Art Galleries, represent the best of what van der Velden gave New Zealand in terms of a new, refreshing, European style. Painting in New Zealand in the 1890s was ripe for a change and this came about with the arrival of three men: Petrus van der Velden 1837-1913 the Dutchman, James Nairn 1859-1904 the Scot, and the Italian Girolamo Nerli 1860-1926. Young talented artists flocked to their lessons and learned from their work.

By 1890, Europe was in full fin-de-siècle swing with Post-Impressionism and Art Nouveau. New Zealand painting needed a new direction, an injection of European flair and Petrus van der Velden, Nairn and Nerli provided it. 1892 saw van der Velden making his first trip to the Otira Gorge the fruits of which are considered his best New Zealand paintings. This work was once in the collection of W S Baverstock who, for twenty years (1949-69), was Honorary Curator then Director of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery which now forms a major part of the Christchurch Art Gallery.

The sharp zig-zag of the composition, the thick impasto, his violent, broad brushstrokes reflecting the power of the water, together with the drama of his chiaroscuro, result in a romantic take on the New Zealand landscape. Indeed, in each of his Otira Gorge views is a Turner-like vortex of light in the sky; here it is brighter than some of his other views in the Auckland Art Gallery and Christchurch. Van der Velden took New Zealand art down a new path. Nothing like this had been seen in New Zealand before. This Mountain Stream, Otira Gorge is a fitting pictorial example of his well-worn saying: "colour is light".

"I serve my God in studying Nature," he wrote. "Art is Holy ... complete proof of the existence of the Divine, the Great Artist, the Creator."

The power of the swirling water changing from green to white to blue and back again, the light in the lower point of the V-shaped sky, this is the Sublime in the natural world. It is, as Dunedin Public Art Gallery Curator Justin Paton says of the Dunedin version, "a painting about being overwhelmed by nature, by God, and by art, which (for van der Velden) were one and the same".

Angela Mackie (Ashford)