Expressions Gallery

The Expressions Art & Entertainment Centre includes a public art gallery.

Expressions Gallery includes in its collection work from the Pumpkin Cottage group: early New Zealand impressionist paintings gifted by Ernest and Shirley Cosgrove who had collected them over 30 years.

Artist and teacher James Nairn is regarded as the person who brought impressionism to New Zealand when he arrived from Scotland in 1890. He first rented Pumpkin cottage about 1895 as a retreat for bohemian artists who favoured painting outside*'en pleinair'.*

Like the originators of the style in France and England, New Zealand impressionist painters moved away from academic painting and favoured everyday scenes rather than grand views such as Mitre Peak.