Art by Edith Collier

Collier left provincial Whanganui, New Zealand, at 27 to study in London, and the modernist influences she picked up while working in Cornwall, Scotland, and Ireland made her paintings unrecognizable to the conservative art world she came from when she finally returned home in 1922. The local reception was harsh enough that, in the most-repeated and painful detail of her biography, her own father destroyed a number of her finest paintings, including nude studies he considered improper. She remained largely overlooked during her lifetime; a major reassessment, "Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist," toured New Zealand's Sarjeant Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery in 2024 and 2025.