Anthony Audrey St Clair Murray Murray-Oliver, MBE 1915-1986

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 20, Issue 1, 1 May 1987, Page 5

Anthony Audrey St Clair Murray Murray-Oliver, MBE 1915 - 1986

Jeavons Baillie

Tony Murray-Oliver who died in November after a short illness will be missed by the many institutions, committees, societies, friends, acquaintances, paintings, drawings, prints, gardens, flowers, trees, books, periodicals, manuscripts and cats that were the stuff of Tony’s life. For more than two thirds of that life he was principally identified with the Alexander Turnbull Library, and for him it was certainly a home away from home for more than the obligatory 7 hours 35 minutes. However, Tony’s arrival at the Library arose from no ambition; the Library had meant little to him till then. On leaving Christchurch Boys High School he had joined Ballantyne’s as a draper’s assistant. To their credit they recognised his potential and encouraged him to take up a career in something other than salesmanship. In 1938, aged 22, he commenced work at the Turnbull Library. By 1940 he was already recognised in the Library as the reference expert on art. In the same year he volunteered for the RNZAF and commenced service in June 1942. On his return home from the Solomon Islands at the end of the war Tony found his father’s ill health had compelled him to give up farming and that his own help was needed with the farm at Rakaia until it could be sold. He recommenced work at the Library in June 1946, completed a B. A. degree in 1947 and a M. A. the following year. By then he had responsibilities in most areas of Library activity as well as being in charge of the Art Section.

In 1950 the opportunity arose to join the South Pacific Commission as acting Librarian for six months. In the event he did not return to the Turnbull from New Caledonia for two years, and it was some time before he put his watch forward to New Zealand time. In those two years he had experienced French colonial life, a far cry from life in egalitarian post-war New Zealand. He set about changing that. He founded Les Amis de Nouvelle-Caledonie en Nouvelle Zelande, the Wellington Wine and Food Society, and started a private dining club which paved the way for licensed restaurants. The pattern of his life had now been established. Tony was also at various times the secretary-treasurer of the Wellington Regional Committee of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, the vice-

chairman of the Scenery Preservation Society, Wellington, the chairman of the Friends of Old St Paul’s and a member of the Advisory Committee for Old St Paul’s, a member of the New Zealand Litter Control Council, and a council member of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust and the Art Galleries and Museums Association of New Zealand. But the Library was the focus of his life and shortly after his unwilling retirement in 1980 he wrote to his friends that he felt ‘a sort of non-person’.

Tony was a ‘giver’ par excellence of his time, his friendship and his love. His passionate interests brought him into contact with a wide range of people, many of whom owned New Zealand paintings, diaries and other material of research value. He created an informal network the length and breadth of New Zealand and overseas of people with every type of interest in our cultural heritage. Through their acquaintance with Tony many have made other connections and found new friends. There have been many occasions when the Library has been permitted first option to purchase or has become the grateful recipient of a donation through Tony’s acquaintanceship with those fortunate enough to possess material of value to the research collections of the Library. As recently as 1984, four years after he had formally retired from the Public Service, the Library was most generously donated two Heaphy watercolour drawings located by Tony some years earlier.

Tony organised and catalogued many of the exhibitions that were mounted, but these could only show a fraction of the collections and then only for a short time. He was always aware of the conflict between gathering research material which often had aesthetic and historical appeal and then, in the interest of long term preservation, denying access to the members of the public who were not pursuing any line of research. In 1963 the Queen opened New Zealand House in London, and at Tony’s instigation the first of the Turnbull prints were published. Thus began the programme of bringing the images of early New Zealand paintings held in the collections into homes and offices everywhere. For the rest of his working life Tony was responsible for recommending to the Chief Librarian paintings suitable for each issue, and in most cases he wrote the accompanying published notes. The prints have probably done most to make the New Zealand public at large aware of the Library.

I first met Tony Murray-Oliver in 1966, when I was employed at the Victoria University Library to mount a group of maps. My interest in the conservation of cultural property had recently led me to consider the career possibilities. The maps I was working on were part of the Fildes Collection and on one occasion I noticed a pair of pencil sketches by Heaphy. I had photographs taken and set

off to the Turnbull. Tony saw me, and it was not long before his interest moved from the sketches to my own work and ambitions. As a result of that encounter I was to become one of the young people for whom Tony held a lamp. In fact in my case it led to my recruitment by the Library several years later as a Conservation Officer. Tony’s own arrival had been even more by chance and he was aware that the interest of young people in the arts, in our heritage and indeed in any aspects of the finer things in life needed nurturing if institutions like the Turnbull were to prosper and New Zealand to develop. How many there must be who have met Tony and received that encouragement.

To mark the occasion of Tony Murray-Oliver’s retirement from the Library, a selective list of his publications was published in the Record (v. 14 no A, May 1981, 35-39). This was based on a much fuller unpublished bibliography compiled by Diana Meads.