L. W. Wilson

Laurence William Wilson (fl.1860-1904) is believed to have arrived in New Zealand in the late 1870s. He lived a peripatetic lifestyle, with a somewhat cavalier attitude to money - one source said he was supported by his family (who owned a shipping company), another that he managed to dissipate more than ten thousand pounds won on race-horses, another that his wife was a barmaid he taught to paint - but he was a friend and respected companion to other painters, at one time sharing a studio with Nerli. He was a competent and prolific painter whose work was exhibited throughout New Zealand and at the St Louis Exposition of 1904: he is believed to have returned to England and to have died there.