James Alexander (J. A.) Bond (1870 – 1940) Artist, adventurer, sportsman
There is a grave in Auckland’s Purewa Cemetery for one James Alexander Bond, who died in 1940 aged about 70. In the cemetery records his occupation is given as ‘artist’. There is no birth record for a James Alexander Bond in New Zealand, but his obituary in the New Zealand Herald describes him as “a well-known New Zealand artist’’ who left the country many years ago and only returned recently from Australia due to ill health. Could this be the real painter J. A. Bond, about whom little is known and whose work is often said to be one of Henry Thomas Garratt’s pseudonyms?
A brief research into archival records in New Zealand and Australia has revealed that the artist had quite a profile in both countries between 1900 and 1935. During that time he received commissions from the Queensland Government Tourist Bureau to paint Australian scenes and from art connoisseurs on both sides of the Tasman interested in purchasing images of New Zealand scenery. He also possessed an astute capacity to attract publicity and promote himself through newspapers, seemingly at every opportunity. In other words, what is lost to us now is just how well known he actually was in his day, not only as an artist but as a seasoned traveller and adventurer. J. A. Bond deserves recognition in his own right.
Bond first makes an appearance as an artist in the records of the 1890s, living at his father’s house at 80 Wyndham Street in central Auckland. His father, Alexander Bond, was a tobacconist and owned the house from the 1880s till well into the early 1900s. James continued to live there until at least 1908. To succeed as an artist in late colonial New Zealand you needed to have more than just a talent for drawing and a place to exhibit your work, you needed the ability to foster the right connections and have a flair for generating publicity were needed to build a profile and encourage sales. J. A. Bond seems to have recognised this quite early on in his career. In 1897, for example, when he was in his late teens, the Auckland Star congratulated ‘Mr J. A. Bond, a pupil of Professor Aldis’ (Auckland University Professor of Mathematics) for his faithful and very lifelike representation of his subject matter … the pretty pieces of moving water in the foreground, are very true to nature.” This was to be the first of many articles and listings that would appear in regional newspapers in New Zealand early in his career where he is promoted as “the well-known Auckland artist.” After 1908, J. A. Bond took to the road, visiting numerous towns and scenic spots across the North and South Islands. Everywhere he went he would either arrange to be interviewed by a local reporter or place a personal add, like this one:
Tracing these newspaper appearances between 1908 and 1912 it is possible to follow his journey through Hastings, the Wairarapa, Wellington, Wanganui, Nelson and Blenheim. One such article states that “Bond’s skill has been rewarded by receiving some high prices for his work…. Some of which ran as high as three figures” and he intends to paint pictures of the best local scenery as well as “calling on a large number of residents in the district, when they will have the opportunity of securing and seeing some works of art quite out of the ordinary.” Bond’s preferred medium was dry oils (pastels) on board and sometimes velvet. And in his day he was recognised as an “admirer of the beauties of nature, having the ability to interpret them on canvas.”
After 1908 Bond disappears from New Zealand records and re-appears in Australia having reinvented himself as the “well-known New Zealand artist,” and an intrepid adventurer. He was commissioned by the Queensland Tourism Bureau to paint Australian scenes and returned to New Zealand for extended holidays travelling all over the country to make sketches and paintings of New Zealand “beauty spots” for Australian art connoisseurs. These trips often involved spending months on the road – ‘motoring through the Dominion”, camping at motor camps for two to three weeks at a time for the purpose of “capturing some of the scenic glories on canvas”. In Australia he would go to ‘out of the way places in search of material for his brush”, camping in the remarkable scenery north of Cairns for four months, where he encountered a walking fish in the mangroves and tussled with a “4ft. 6in. iguana.” Whilst on a scientific expedition to the Great Barrier Reef he had a narrow escape from an octopus and a sea spider. In other interviews he reports having close encounters with snakes and dingoes, and whilst in pursuit of inspiration of his artwork in New Zealand fending off stingrays while fishing at night, waist deep in shark infested waters. These were for Bond, “simply incidents in an adventurous career”.
Thus, counter to the very brief obituary that appeared at his death in 1940, James Alexander (A. J. Bond) emerges as a Crocodile Dundee of sorts, who by his own account was an itinerant and a prolific landscape painter “possessed with what might be termed the spirit of the rover” who had “many unusual adventures, some of them hair-raising, in 28 years travel in various parts of the globe. A keen rifle shot, his love for sport has led him in some tight corners and because he bargains for more on the trips he is about to undertake, his nerves could not be said to have frayed.”
Given the biographical evidence about this artist, we can remove “J. A. Bond” from the list of pseudonyms attributed to Henry Thomas Garratt, and acknowledge this artist as part of the colourful line up of early New Zealand landscape painters. What remains, however, is a mystery as to just how prolific was the Bond, the artist? That he was a seasoned traveller is beyond doubt, but counter to the number of places he visited specifically to depict the scenery very few of his works survive.
