Owen Merton
Owen Merton - 1887-1931
Owen Heathcote Grierson Merton was
born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1887, a member of a family active in
the Anglican church, in education and in the musical life of the community.
He was educated at Christ's College, where he had his first formal art
lessons, and continued those studies at the Canterbury College School of Art
(1903) and in London (1905-6).
During a return visit to New Zealand in 1907-9, he held
solo exhibitions in Wellington and Christchurch, and participated in art
society shows. He met Dorothy Kate Richmond, the doyenne of the Wellington
art scene, and her nephew Esmond Atkinson, who was also a painter. Merton
re-enrolled briefly at the Canterbury College School of Art in 1908.
In 1909 he returned to London, where he studied with the
Flemish-born painter Charles van Havermaet in 1909-10, and made extended
working visits to the Netherlands, Cornwall and Brittany. On this last
occasion he participated in a sketching class at Concarneau, taught by
Frances Hodgkins. He also travelled in other parts of western France in the
summer of 1910.
Merton was elected to membership of the Royal Society of
British Artists in 1910, and showed works in their 1910 and 1911
exhibitions. He continued to exhibit works in New Zealand until the late
1920s and was represented in several group shows in England and France
between 1910 and 1926.
During an extended period in which he was based in Paris
(1910-3) he studied first at the Académie Colarossi, then in the studio of
Percyval Tudor-Hart where fellow-New Zealander Maud Sherwood was also
studying. It is there that he met Ruth Calvert Jenkins, an American art
student whom he married in London in 1914. In these years he made excursions
to Northern Spain, England and Italy.
Ruth and Owen Merton lived from mid-1914 to mid-1916 in
Prades, southern France, where their first son, Tom, was born in 1915. Owen
played the piano in charity concerts and perhaps in the local cinema and
refused to enlist after war was declared.
The family moved to New York in 1916, and Owen was based
there until 1923. Their second son, John Paul, was born in 1918 and Ruth
Merton died in 1921. Owen may have lived for a time as a farm worker and he
certainly worked as a professional landscape- and garden-designer, church
organist and cinema pianist. He exhibited in numerous group and solo shows,
including some important curated exhibitions, in New York and Philadelphia
in the period 1917-1925 and was clearly considered by his peers to be a
serious member of the New York avant-garde.
In the years 1921-3, after his wife's death, he visited
Bermuda (twice) and Cape Cod (once). He was given a solo exhibition in the
prestigious Daniel Gallery, New York, in 1923.
Meanwhile he had met the American writer Evelyn Scott in
Bermuda, in late 1921 or early 1922, and lived with her until 1925. He
became the basis for characters in several of her novels.
He made an extended visit to Europe (Italy, France,
England) in 1923-5, and also spent some months of the winter of 1923-4 in
Algeria. He had a solo exhibition at the Leicester Gallery, London, in 1925,
and a second solo exhibition in New York (Daniel Gallery) also in 1925.
After a brief visit to New York in the summer of 1925, he
returned to Europe for the last time, accompanied by Tom.
They settled in Saint-Antonin, south-western France,
where he bought land and built a house. Owen travelled widely in southern
France to paint, he played the piano in the Saint-Antonin cinema and was
president of the local rugby club.
His second solo exhibition in London was held in 1928 and
he was based in England thereafter (with at least three short visits to
France), although his house would not be sold until 1930.
