A Life of Observation and Record

Born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1908, Una Platts grew up in a world that was beginning to find its own visual language. The daughter of Charles Oakley Platts and Flora Galbraith, she moved with her family to Auckland, a city that would become the backdrop for much of her intellectual and creative life. After attending the Diocesan School for Girls and later Auckland University College, she began her professional life as a teacher, a role that likely nurtured the clarity and precision she would later bring to her historical studies.

Her interests were never confined to a single medium. While she was a painter, her mind was equally drawn to the preservation of history. In the 1950s, she worked with the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, curating exhibitions that brought the colonial era and the early history of Auckland into the light. She had a way of looking backward to understand the present, ensuring that the artists of the nineteenth century were not forgotten by the generations that followed.

The Scholar and the Painter

Platts possessed a rare ability to balance the practical work of a curator with the deep, solitary research required of a historian. Her most significant contribution to New Zealand's cultural memory came through her exhaustive study of the country's early art. This was not a sudden achievement but the result of twenty-six years of careful investigation. Her work provided a foundation for understanding the people who first attempted to capture the New Zealand landscape on canvas.

Her life was marked by several distinct roles and contributions:

• Painter and visual artist
• Art historian and researcher
• Teacher and educator
• Curator for the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

Her influence extended into the social circles of the Auckland art community. She was a contemporary of significant figures, and her own presence was noted by those who shaped the local scene. Even her own likeness became a subject for others, with portraits of her held in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

Legacy in Ink and Oil

The work she left behind is both personal and academic. Her book, Nineteenth Century New Zealand Artists: A Guide & Handbook, published in 1980, remains a primary resource for anyone seeking to understand the origins of the nation's art history. It is a work born of patience and a deep respect for the past. Alongside her writing, her own paintings, such as her 1955 self-portrait, offer a glimpse into her own perspective and the way she saw herself within her changing world.

She lived until 2005, passing away in the Auckland region. Through her writing and her art, she helped ensure that the visual history of New Zealand remained a tangible, studied, and understood part of the national identity.