An outrigger in the New Hebrides

The present canvas presumably a gift to Stanley, who is reported to have inspired the artist's travels: '... Mr Charles Gordon Frazer, the well-known painter of Australasian subjects and scenery ... studied art at St John's Wood School of Art, at South Kensington, and at the Royal Academy, but never remained long at any of these places, preferring the freedom of Nature direct. He went to Paris, and has lived in Italy, where he studied the old masters and sketched from nature, until a chance meeting with Henry Morton Stanley, the great African explorer, awakened his latent desire for a life less circumscribed than European civilisation permits.' Gordon-Frazer set off for New Zealand in 1888, beginning an itinerant career, working in Australia and Melanesia: ' ... he then successively visited the South Sea Islands, New Guinea, and also traversed Australia northwards as far as the Gulf of Carpentaria, sketching everywhere, and collecting the rich material of which he has made so good use in his pictures.' (from Our Contemporaries -- A Biographical Repertoire of the Men and Women of the Day 1897-1898, London, 1898, p.198). The artist died of blackwater fever in 1899. For a collection of his work, including his large 'Cannibal Feast on the island of Tanna, New Hebrides', see Christie's South Kensington, 10 Nov. 1988, lots 152-58.