VIDA ISABELLA STEINERT (1903 – 1999) A modernist painter of note, Vida Steinert (née Vickers) was born in Hamilton in 1903 and trained at Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts. She was an early member of the Rutland Group alongside Jack Crippen and Ruth Coyle, and maintained close associations with Auckland contemporaries including Charles Tole, Bessie Christie, Helen Brown, Joan Lillicrap, Joycelyn Harrison-Smith and Alison Pickmere. Working primarily in oils, watercolour and pencil, Steinert brought a distinctively modern sensibility to depictions of New Zealand people and landscape. Her paintings often balance structural clarity with lyrical colour and light, reflecting an interest in everyday local subjects rendered with compositional refinement. Steinert exhibited widely from the 1940s through the 1960s, including with The Group (Christchurch, 1950), the Rutland Group, and the Auckland Society of Arts. Among her best-known works are The Valley, Ponies at the Fair, Road to Colville, and Spanish Dancer.

Webb's, Fine New Zealand Paintings & Foreign Paintings, Auckland, 26/06/2001