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Leo Bensemann Untitled (Portrait) c1934 oil on canvas 270 x 220mm   PROVENANCE Private collection, Canterbury. Gifted by bequest, c2003; Collection of Lawrence Baigent and Robert Erwin, Wellington.   Leo Bensemann – Untitled (Portrait) Essay by PETER SIMPSON   Within the Bensemann family this painting was thought to be Leo Bensemann’s very first portrait in oils. Lawrence Baigent, Bensemann’s close friend who owned the picture, also thought so. Bensemann seldom dated his early pictures so it is impossible to fully verify this story, but assuming it is true the date of the painting is probably 1934. In Portraits Masks & Fantasy Figures (2005), by Caroline Otto, Bensemann’s daughter, the earliest dated portraits are c. 1934 and 1935, so presumably the untitled portrait is contemporary with the earlier of these, hence 1934 as an educated guess.   Prior to this Bensemann was primarily a graphic artist. He showed talent in drawing from a young age, winning a prize at Nelson College. When he moved to Christchurch around 1931 (aged 19) he attempted to establish himself first as a caricaturist, contributing pen and ink drawings to various publications such as The New Zealand Artists Annual. Another early interest was ink drawings for bookplates, in those days a popular medium for graphic artists. He also began producing narrative illustrations early on, such as his frontispiece for the Caxton Press publication, Another Argo (1934), which culminated in the masterpiece of his graphic art, Fantastica: Thirteen Drawings (Caxton, 1937). Another mode at which he excelled early in his career was watercolour landscapes strongly influenced by Japanese woodcuts by Hiroshige and Hokusai to the extent that he even signed his name vertically in imitation of Japanese practice. Writing to Pat Lawlor, a collector of bookplates, in 1934 Bensemann signalled a new development: ‘The other branches of my art, as it were, gently but firmly progress. I hope to have some presentable paintings to exhibit as soon as possible’ ¹ And in a letter two years later in 1936, he told Lawlor: ‘nowadays I spend far more time painting than I ever did with black and white…This is not because my interest has waned at all but simply that painting when things are sorted out is my medium’ ². The transition to painting had taken place.   Within a year or two Bensemann had gravitated to painting portraits of family members and friends such as Rita Angus, Lawrence Baigent and Denis Glover, as well as many self-portraits; but there was a transitional phase, around 1934- 37, when many of his portraits depicted imaginary figures or persons out of history or literature. Almost certainly the present portrait depicts not a ‘real’ person but someone imaginary, such as, for example, a character from a Jacobean tragedy such as Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy. This is suggested by the necklace worn by the dark and somewhat troubled-looking figure which is more like costume jewellery for a character in an historical play than everyday wear for a young man in the 1930s. The best known of Bensemann’s ‘imaginary’ portraits are St. Francis and St. Olaf, c. 1937. After 1937 he turned exclusively to portraits of contemporaries.   Someone once remarked of Bensemann that whatever he took up he was ‘expert from the word go’. Such is the case with this portrait. If it is indeed his first ever portrait it is astonishingly accomplished. The face emerges from the dark background and clothing with extraordinary realism, the subject’s features – eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks and chin firmly and convincingly delineated. It was a brilliant beginning and a strong sign of things to come.   1 Peter Simpson, Fantastica: The World of Leo Bensemann, AUP, 2011, p. 20. 2 Ibid.