Commissioning a Visual Legacy: Louis John Steele and Sir John Logan Campbell

In 2017, Louis John Steele’s portrait of Sir John Logan Campbell at Kilbryde, c.1902, emerged on the auction market after over a century in private hands. It is a fascinating portrait of one Auckland’s earliest and most celebrated Pākehā citizens. The portrait is Steele’s most ambitious portrait and shows him creatively adapting the British aristocratic portrait tradition to the New Zealand context. No commissioning documents have been traced for the portrait, however a close reading of the painting alongside Campbell’s papers reveal it is filled with highly personal symbolism. The provenance of the painting is also uncovered through this research. Examination of the Kilbryde portrait with Steele’s five other portraits of Campbell demonstrates Campbell’s desire to leave a lasting visual legacy.