Mina Arndt

Mina Arndt: Artist

Mina Arndt

A talented artist, Mina Arndt was largely ignored until the 1960s. Thereafter, her place in New Zealand art has gradually been recognised. An interest in women artists has helped raise awareness and contributed to an increased appreciation for her work, which is represented in private collections and galleries in New Zealand and in galleries in England, Australia and France.

Mina (Hermina) Arndt (1885-1926) was born at Thurlby Domain, the former Hallenstein family homestead near Arrowtown to Herman Arndt, a merchant, b. 1832 in Pomerania (modern Poland), and his wife, Marie Beaver, b 1847 in Swiecie (also modern Poland).  Herman and Marie were married in Dunedin in 1872. Herman (Henry) died in March 1885 a few weeks before Mina’s birth, so Marie moved Mina and her siblings, Charles (b. 1873), Edith (b 1877), and Jennie (b 1879), to Dunedin.  

Mina attended Otago Girls’ High School until she was 13 when the family relocated to Wellington.  Early in 1907, the family left for London where Mina attended art school. The interests and movements of her family determined the nature of her training while the timing of her arrival in England largely isolated her from contemporary trends in modern art.  While Arndt studied with artists whose practice was considered up-to-date, they were not avant-garde. The first of Arndt's significant male mentors was Frank Brangwyn who encouraged her drawing talent and her experimentation with printmaking and other media.   Her descendants believe that she also studied at the Slade School of Art.   

‘The Derelict’, Mina Arndt

fernergalleries.co.nz

‘Homewards’, Mina Arndt, 1913

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki

‘The Red Hat’, Mina Arndt, 1914

Collections, Te Papa

‘Māori mother and child’, Mina Arndt, 1918

Collections, Te Papa

‘Mother and child’, Mina Arndt, c 1921

Modelled on Mina's son John (1920-1996)

‘Spring in Motueka’, Mina Arndt, 1923

in gouache

In London, Arndt made the acquaintance of a German printmaker, Hermann Struck, who accepted her as one of his select group of pupils in Berlin. “At a time when colonial expatriates were flocking to the studios of Paris, it was unusual for a New Zealander to study in Germany. However, Arndt had family ties there and spoke German.”[1] In late 1907 or early 1908, Mina joined Stanhope Forbes's school of art in Newlyn, Cornwall.  By 1911, she was back in Berlin, renting a studio and living with her two sisters.  Around this time she began studying under Lovis Corinth, returning to Cornwall in early 1913.  That same year she exhibited at the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français in Paris. In March 1914, Arndt had two works in an exhibition intended for the Royal Academy of Arts at the Passmore Edwards Art Gallery.  She was back in Germany by August when the First World War was declared.   Briefly interned with her sister Edith, they were released as part of an exchange of women prisoners.

After returning to New Zealand in 1914, Arndt lived in Wellington, renting a studio on Willis Street.  There she met her future husband, Leo Manoy. They married in 1917 and moved to Motueka with Leo’s two-year old daughter May who had lost her mother in childbirth.  In 1920, their son John was born.  From 1916-1925, Mina Arndt produced over 60 works, though she never achieved popularity. The general consensus on her work ‘was a little wanting in colour and lightness,’ probably a result of the influence of her Cornish teachers interest in folk subjects and the prevailing dark quality of German printmaking.  Subsequently, she opened her own art school and became Vice-President of the National Art Association of New Zealand.  Mina Arndt died in 1926 of nephritis, but May and John Manoy ensured their mother’s work would find acclaim in her homeland, making generous gifts of her work to New Zealand’s public art galleries.   In recent years, her work has received the recognition it well deserves. [2]

Arndt was a member of the Société nationale des beaux-arts, the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers and the Australian Painter Etchers Society. She was an artist member of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and in the mid 1920s was a Nelson vice president of the National Art Association of New Zealand. She was possibly also a member of the Royal Academy of Arts and the Société des artistes français. In 1924 she was awarded a medal at the British Empire Exhibition, Wembley.

[1] Jane Clendon. 'Arndt, Hermina - Biography', from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10

[2] [2] Rose Bowie, Mina Arndt in Women of Valour, pp. 63-64.

With thanks to Cheryl Sucher and Susan Isaacs for their contributions to this piece.