Alfred Henry O'Keeffe

Who was Alfred Henry O'Keeffe?

Alfred Henry O'Keeffe, was a notable New Zealand artist and art teacher, who spent the majority of his life in Dunedin. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, he was one of the few New Zealand artists to engage with new ideas while staying in New Zealand. At this time most adventurous New Zealand painters, such as Frances Hodgkins, went overseas. He has sometimes been described as a Vasari - a recorder of artists and their doings - based upon his published recollections, which are the only first hand published account of that milieu.

O'Keeffe was born in Sandhurst, Victoria, Australia in 1858. By c.1865 he and his family had moved to Dunedin. O'Keeffe studied at the Dunedin School of Art c.1881-86 and later at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1894-1895. He started exhibiting at the Otago Art Society in 1886 and also exhibited with the Canterbury Society of Arts, the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, the Auckland Society of Arts, South Canterbury Arts Society and the Wanganui Society of Arts and Crafts.

The demands of providing for his wife and six children meant O'Keeffe could not always afford to work as a full-time artist.