Alfred Henry O'Keeffe

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Alfred Henry O'Keeffe (21 July 1858 - 27 July 1941), New Zealand artist and art teacher. O'Keeffe is noteworthy in New Zealand art history. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, he was one of the few New Zealand artists to engage with modernist ideas while actually remaining in New Zealand. At this time most advanced New Zealand artists, like Frances Hodgkins, were expatriates.

O'Keeffe was born in Sandhurst, Victoria, Australia in 1858. By c.1865 he and his family had moved to Dunedin, New Zealand. O'Keeffe studied at the Dunedin School of Art c.1882-86 and later at the Academie Julian in Paris in 1894-1895. He started exhibiting at the Otago Art Society in 1886, and he also exhibited with the Canterbury Society of Arts, New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Auckland Society of Arts and Wanganui Society of Arts and Crafts.

The financial demands of providing for his wife and five children meant O'Keeffe could not always afford to work as a full time artist. Before going to Paris he managed the Liverpool Arms Hotel in Dunedin, and after his return from 1895-1905 he ran the Outram Hotel.

He also supplemented his income by teaching art. While living at Outram he took private classes in Dunedin, walking the 14 miles between the two. He taught at the Dunedin School of Art from 1912 until its temporary disestablishment in 1920. In the early 1920s he taught at the 'Barn Studio' with Mabel Hill. Her 1913 portrait of O'Keeffe is now in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Four of O'Keeffe's five children predeceased him. His two sons Lawrence and Victor were both killed in 1915 at Gallipoli. This experience is commemorated in his most famous painting The Defence Minister's Telegram (1921, Dunedin Public Art Gallery), which shows an elderly man receiving news of his son's death. One of his daughters died in 1917 and another in 1939.

Scholarship on O'Keeffe

To date the three main resources on O'Keeffe are:

Dr Roger Collins, 'O'Keeffe, Alfred Henry 1858 - 1941', in Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Volume Three (1901-1920), 1996
Peter Entwisle, 'Alfred Henry O'Keeffe', in William Mathew Hodgkins & His Circle, Dunedin, 1984
Barry Cleavin, 'An appreciation of A. H. O'Keeffe, painter, 1858--1941'. DipFA thesis, Canterbury, 1966

Ralph Body is currently undertaking a Master of Arts in Art History and Theory at the University of Otago focusing on O'Keeffe as an artist and teacher.

Images by Alfred Henry O'Keeffe on the Web