13 Facts About Evelyn Page

Evelyn Page's career covered seven decades, and her main areas of interest were landscapes, portraits, still lifes and nudes.

Evelyn Page's father was accountant and then manager of Suckling Brothers shoe company.

Evelyn Page's parents encouraged her and her sisters to learn music and painting from an early age; in fact, Page could read both words and music, and was able to draw, before starting school.

Evelyn Page initially wanted to follow in her father's footsteps and learn book-keeping, and asked to be sent to Christchurch Technical College, however she didn't enjoy the experience.

Evelyn Page quickly progressed from elementary to advanced classes, under her teachers Cecil Kelly, Leonard Booth, Archibald Nicoll and Richard Wallwork.

Evelyn Page received a number of prizes while at the school, as well as first class honours in her examinations.

In 1922, Evelyn Page was elected to the Canterbury Society of Arts, which enabled her to begin working as a professional artist, exhibiting and selling portraits and landscape works around New Zealand.

In 1927, Evelyn Page was a founding member of a group of Canterbury artists who became known simply as The Group.

From 1930 to 1936, Evelyn Page was a teacher at the Canterbury College School of Art.

Evelyn Page started to use pure colour after this trip.

In 1983, Evelyn Page was made a Fellow of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, and was the first artist to hold the Governor-General's Art Award.

Evelyn Page married pianist Frederick Evelyn Page in 1938 in Governors Bay, near Christchurch, and they rented a country house there for the next seven years before moving to Wellington.

Evelyn Page's husband died suddenly in 1983, and Page died in 1988 in Wellington.