Cubist Fungi

One of Taranaki's early botanical artists, Fanny Bertha Good (1860-1950), brought a touch of Cubism to her unusual paintings of New Zealand fungi. The picture plane of this oil painting, N.Z. fungi 27, has been broken up into six different windows. Each depicting several of the estimated 22,000 species of fungi in New Zealand.

Good's use of a fractured picture plane was unlike the work of her contemporaries. Her compositional device may indicate the far-reaching influence of the avant-garde Cubist movement, which revolutionised France's art scene during the early 20th Century.

Good began painting at the age of 17 after losing her hearing. She was tutored by her father, Captain Thomas Good, who immigrated to Taranaki in 1845 and was regarded as a skilled landscape painter. Fanny Good was a prolific painter, with 260 of her works held in the Puke Ariki Heritage Collection.