Owen Merton

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Owen Heathcote Grierson Merton, RBA (1887–1931) was a New Zealand-born British painter. His paintings display an interest in the Post-Impressionist representational style, primarily through watercolor landscapes and seascapes.

Merton was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he studied at the Canterbury School of Art. He later travelled to Europe, staying and painting in England and France, until the pressures of the First World War in France drove him, along with his wife and son, to New York in 1916. Merton settled with his family in Flushing, Long Island, where he worked briefly as a landscape gardener.

The death of his wife in 1921 coincided with his departure from New York; first to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and then to Bermuda. Merton exhibited his paintings periodically, with varying degrees of success, and after returning to Europe in 1923, was eventually elected to the Royal Society of British Artists. He continued to travel between his birthplace of New Zealand, Europe and the USA. He died of a brain tumor in England in 1931.

Owen Merton's paintings can be found in permanent installation in galleries around the world, most particularly in England and New Zealand, where a major retrospective of his work was displayed in 2004.

Owen Merton was the father of Thomas Merton, the well-known Trappist monk, writer, activist and Roman Catholic theologian.