Biography

William Trethewey (1892-1956) was born in Christchurch. He left school at the age of 13 and began work as a wood carver, studying at night at the Canterbury College School of Art, where he came into contact with Frederick Gurnsey. In 1914 he moved to Wellington and studied life modelling under J. Ellis. Trethewey returned to Christchurch and decided to shift from wood carving to stone, and for the remainder of his life worked as a monumental mason, 'supplying angels and carving headstones for the people of Canterbury'. He became aware of the potential for memorial sculptures at the end of the First World War and his first commission in this line was a St Andrews cross as a memorial for Elmwood School. In 1920 he submitted a piece, 'The Bomb-thrower', to the annual Christchurch Art Society exhibition. This piece aroused a great deal of public interest, and the Society purchased it for their collection. It was considered unsuitable for a war memorial, because it was a realistic portrait of a New Zealand soldier about to hurl a grenade, rather than the idealised image of heroic youth that was preferred for war memorials. Despite this, in 1920, Trethewey was awarded the commission for the Kaiapoi war memorial, which, when unveiled in 1922, was described by the mayor as being a 'typical Anzac' down to the 'broken boot-lace'. Other sculptures of Trethewey's between 1920 and the early 1930s include a bust of Hyman Marks, the statue of Captain James Cook, in Victoria Square, Christchurch and a statue of Maui Pomare for Manukorihi Pa in Waitara. He began his most famous work, the Citizens War Memorial in Christchurch, in 1933 and it was unveiled in 1937. This memorial is, arguably, the finest public monument in New Zealand. Subsequently he was commissioned to sculpt most of the statuary for the centennial exhibition in Wellington. The only piece of this to survive is the statue of Kupe. The interest in monumental sculpture waned over the course of the twentieth century, and Trethewey spent the last years of his life making clocks. He died in 1956. (Chris Maclean and Jock Phillips, 'The Sorrow and the Pride : New Zealand War Memorials', Wellington, 1990.)

Name

Trethewey, William

Type

Sculptor