Margaret Mary Butler

Life

Butler was the child of Mary Delaney and her husband Edward Butler, an engineer. After Edward's death in August 1884 the family moved to Wellington, where Mary became a prosperous hotel-keeper. Butler was educated at St Mary's Convent. She then attended the Wellington School of Design where she studied modelling with Joseph Ellis. From Ellis she acquired a lasting interest in portraiture. One of Margaret Butler's few surviving early works is a portrait bust of William Hall-Jones (c. 1920). This bust was exhibited at the 1924–25 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, London, and is now held by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Butler travelled to Europe in 1923 and stayed there until 1934. Her travels took her to Paris, Brittany, Rome, Vienna and Biskra, Algeria; Frances Hodgkins met her in Nice in 1924. Health problems prevented Butler from resuming sculpture until 1926, when her work attracted the attention of Antoine Bourdelle, one of Europe's foremost sculptors. He accepted Butler as a student and arranged for her to show three works at the 1927 Salon des Tuileries, Paris. She also exhibited at the salons of the Societe des artistes francais, the Societe nationale des beaux-arts as well as the Royal Academy, London. Her work is displayed at the Musee Jeu de Paume, Paris The highlight of her Paris career was her solo show at the Galerie Hebrard, Paris, in July 1933. Financial problems prevented her from staging an exhibition in London, although her bronze bust, 'The blind girl', was shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1935. While in Europe Butler also had a solo exhibit in Vienna. After seven years of sculptural practice in Paris, where she exhibited in the Salon des Tuileries annually, Butler returned to Wellington.

In July 1934, after returning to New Zealand, Butler held a solo exhibition at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. Lord Bledisloe, the New Zealand Governor General who opened Butler's solo exhibit, pronounced it 'one of the greatest surprises of [my] sojourn in New Zealand'. He called Butler 'our local lady Praxiteles' and welcomed her 'reproductions of the finest types of our handsome Maori race'. in 1938 she exhibited a sculpture, the bust 'Nouvelle Zelande', at the Salon des Tuileries. In 1940 the Academy of Fine Arts purchased her bronze bust of a watchful Swiss boy, 'Berto', and several further works featured at the National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art that year.

Margaret Butler died of cancer at Lewisham Hospital, Wellington, on 4 December 1947. Among those attending her funeral were the prime minister, Peter Fraser, and the Catholic archbishop of Wellington, Thomas O'Shea. She bequeathed the contents of her studio to the Academy of Fine Arts which, in 1950, presented them to the National Art Gallery. In 1992 the National Art Gallery was incorporated into Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and this is now where these sculptures can be found.