Schoon Theo

Theodorus Johannes Schoon 1915 - 1985

Theo Schoon was born in the Dutch East Indies, recieved art training in Holland and migrated to New Zealand in 1939. He lived much of his life here after that.

In 1946 he commenced fieldwork in the South Island recording Maori rock art and continued periodicaly until 1950 latterly in the North Island. His recordings were initialy oil paintings on board but later photographs. His work was sponsored by Canterbury Museum and Roger Duff took part in some of the fieldwork. The sponsorship covered little of the cost. The fullest account of his work is that of Roberts . There is one contemporary account by Schoon himself though written in the third person . Schoon stands accused of having retouched the drawings during this work. Fomison reviews the evidence for this - which is clear. Schoon has described his methods as beign restoratopn dot for dot and never adding any interpretation, and also some self defence: 'I am being blamed for bad retouching work which was done long before I ever saw a cave drawign.' .

Some of the records he made are the only surviving records of features now gone, but the use of greasy crayon in retouching some of the pictures is hard to forgive.

Schoon's personal art was in painting, photograpy and carving of gourds. He is a relatively minor figure in New Zealand art, perhaps best known for his influence on others, including Len Castle, Gordon Walters , Rex Fairburn who made fabric prints utilising Schoon's records and Rita Angus , who painted a portrait of Schoon and he of her.

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