Annie Elizabeth Kelly

Annie Elizabeth Kelly studied at Ilam School of Fine Arts. Training under Edith Munnings is recorded. The field of work recorded is painting. Works named in the authority record are Miss Edith Bryant, May, daughter of Brigadier General Andrew, CMG. And My dining room. Work by Annie Elizabeth Kelly is recorded in the collections of Christchurch Art Gallery, National Collection of War Art, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Hocken Collections and The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū. Distinctions recorded are Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

• Name — Elizabeth Kelly • Birth Name — Annie Elizabeth Abbott • Born — 12 April 1877 • Birthplace — Christchurch, New Zealand • Died — 4 October 1946 • Place of death — Christchurch, New Zealand • Education — Canterbury College School of Art • Field — Painting

Kelly was born in Christchurch on 12 April 1877, the eldest daughter of Maud Laura Abbott (née Mason) and Thomas George Abbott. She studied at the Canterbury College School of Art from 1892 to 1898, under Edith Munnings, Alfred Walsh and George Elliot Clark, the headmaster of the school. Kelly also had lessons from the Dutch artist Petrus Van der Velden, who was living and painting in Christchurch at the time. From 1901 to 1904, she taught as a member of the staff of the School of Art as a student teacher, having gained an art teacher’s certificate extramurally from the Department of Science and Art in Kensington, London.

After leaving the art school, Kelly travelled to the United Kingdom for "a sketching tour in the 'Old Country' ", meeting with artists and visiting galleries in Britain and Europe. On her return journey, she made visits in South Africa and Australia. In 1908, she married fellow artist Cecil Fletcher Kelly and the two painted landscapes together, and, in the 1920s, travelled to Britain and Europe. From the early 1920s, Kelly was a Canterbury Society of Arts council member and remained a regular exhibitor with the society all her life. In 1920, as an official New Zealand war artist, Kelly was commissioned by the New Zealand Government to paint a posthumous portrait of New Zealand Victoria Cross winner Sergeant Henry James Nicholas

By the 1930s, Kelly's portraits not only gathered honours in New Zealand but also overseas, in the United Kingdom and, in particular, France, where in 1934 she was awarded the Paris Salon silver medal by the Société des Artistes Français for her portrait of Miss Edith May. The medal made Kelly a key figure of 1930s art in New Zealand. • Illustration — James Park (1857–1946), Geologist by Kelly In 1931, Kelly exhibited a portrait of Edith Bryan at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and she exhibited at that academy several times thereafter. In 1932, she exhibited the same portrait at the Paris Salon of the Société des Artistes Français. In terms of formal portrait commissions, Kelly was in demand from early in her painting career. Amongst Kelly's commissioned works was her painting of James Park, who had been professor of mining and dean of the Faculty of Mining at the University of Otago. On its purchase in 1940 by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, Park became the first living Scotsman to have his portrait hung in the gallery. Kelly described her technique in relation to her painting of an official portrait of Sir Arthur Dobson, commissioned in 1934: "... when I began work on the portrait... I found that I was not getting the character into the hands that I would have liked... they were restless hands, constantly moving. So I put them down on the canvas as I saw them—capable, finely moulded and, above all, restless." In the 1938 King's Birthday Honours, Kelly was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, becoming the first New Zealand female artist to receive that honour.

• Kelly, Annie Elizabeth CBE née Abbott 1877–1946 in Nineteenth Century New Zealand Artists: A Guide & Handbook (1980) Una Platts