Horace Moore-Jones

Horace Millichamp Moore-Jones, first known as Horace Jones, (3 February 1868 – 3 April 1922) was a notable New Zealand artist, soldier and art teacher.

Born in Malvern Wells, Worcestershire, England, Moore-Jones and his family emigrated to New Zealand when he was about 17 years old. He soon became a professional artist and worked in both New Zealand and Australia. On the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered for service in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF). He participated in the Gallipoli Campaign initially as a sapper but later as a war artist. During his war service and for a time afterwards following his discharge from the NZEF in 1916 he produced a number of sketches and watercolour paintings of Gallipoli. After leaving the NZEF, he worked as an art teacher and conducted a number of exhibitions and lectures around New Zealand. He died in 1922 as a result of extensive burns while rescuing people from a fire which destroyed the Hamilton Hotel, in the city of Hamilton.

Early life Born on 3 February 1868, Horace Jones was one of ten children of David Jones, an engineer by trade, and a school teacher, Sarah Ann . The family lived in Malvern Wells in the county of Worcestershire, England, at the time of his birth. The Jones family emigrated to New Zealand around 1885, settling in Auckland, where Sarah Ann found work at a girls' school on Wellesley Street, in Remuera. Even as a child, Jones expressed an interest in art from an early age, and as a 22-year-old he received formal tuition from Anne Dobson, an art teacher in Auckland. Jones soon began a relationship with Dobson and the two married on 5 September 1891.

Art career Following their wedding, the couple moved to Australia to develop their respective careers as artists, settling in Sydney. It was at this time he changed his name to Horace Millichamp Moore-Jones. He soon developed a good reputation for portraiture and semi-allegorical works which were exhibited with the Art Society of New South Wales. Dobson, who had trained for a time at the Royal Academy in London, also enhanced her already well-known profile. With his wife, Moore-Jones also operated an art school but finances were tight. When, Dobson became ill with tuberculosis, many of the couple's possessions were sold to keep make ends meet. In June 1901, Dobson died and this left Moore-Jones to raise a two-year-old daughter, Norma; two other children had died in their infancy.

Moore-Jones remarried in 1905, to Florence , with whom he would have three more children. Despite living in Australia, he returned to New Zealand on several occasions. There were a number of exhibitions during this time, and he also executed his first example of war art, a painting of troop ships departing Auckland for South Africa during the Boer War. This work was presented to the Auckland Art Gallery in 1902.

In 1908, Moore-Jones moved his family to Auckland and re-established himself as an artist there. To supplement his income he taught art at the girls' school in Remeura where his mother was headmistress. After four years, he went to London and enrolled in an art school there. He then became an artist on the staff of Pearson's Magazine. His work was well received by the public and press. A selection of ten landscape images was published by the London publisher Hugh Rees in a portfolio that included commentary from General Sir Ian Hamilton, the overall commander at Gallipoli, as well as Major-General Alexander Godley, the commander of the NZEF, and Birdwood.

Later in 1916, Moore-Jones was repatriated to New Zealand and discharged from the NZEF due to being medically unfit for active duty. He returned to his family in Auckland and continued creating paintings of the Gallipoli Campaign in between portraiture commissions. As a result of the publicity of his showings in England, there was considerable interest in his Gallipoli work and in November 1916, he gave the first of what proved to be several exhibitions, accompanied by a lecture, of his paintings.

From late 1916 to 1917, his Gallipoli paintings were exhibited around New Zealand and it was during this time that he painted his most notable work, 'The Man with the Donkey'. now held by the Waikato Museum, that Moore-Jones based his work entitled 'The Man with the Donkey'.

The medical orderly was originally believed, including by Moore-Jones, to be the Australian John Simpson Kirkpatrick, who served in the early stages of the Gallipoli Campaign before being killed by a sniper and who was well known for his use of donkeys to transport wounded soldiers from the front lines. However, by 1937 it became known that the man the subject of the photograph on which the painting was based on was not Simpson but Richard Alexander Henderson, a stretcher-bearer in the New Zealand Medical Corps.

Later life On a visit to Hamilton in 1918 to exhibit his work, Moore-Jones was offered a position as an art teacher at Hamilton High School. While his family remained in Auckland, he commuted to Hamilton for the working week, taking a room at the Hamilton Hotel, returning to his home for the weekends. He continued to complete a number of paintings, including further copies of 'The Man with the Donkey'. Early in the morning of 3 April 1922, a fire broke out in the hotel kitchen. Moore-Jones helped to evacuate the guests to a fire escape. Believing a hotel maid to still be inside the burning building, he reentered to try and locate her. Unbeknown to him, the maid was not at the hotel that night. He made his way to another fire escape but received severe burns to his body. Taken to hospital, he died later that day.

Survived by his wife and two children, Moore-Jones was buried at Purewa Cemetery in Auckland, along with another victim of the hotel fire. The funeral service was attended by prominent citizens of the city along with Lieutenant Reginald Judson, a Victoria Cross recipient of the war, who represented the New Zealand Military Forces.

Legacy Moore-Jones' artwork is exhibited at several major institutions in both New Zealand and Australia, including the Australian War Memorial, Auckland City Art Gallery, and the Waikato Museum. On 27 March 2015, a bronze statue of Moore-Jones, was unveiled on Hamilton's Victoria Street facing the old site of the Hamilton Hotel. Sculpted by the official artist of the New Zealand Defence Force, Matt Gauldie, the statue stands high and is mounted on a large block of stone donated by the Turkish Government and sourced from Gallipoli. It depicts the artist in a kneeling pose while performing a sketch on the Gallipoli battlefield. Gauldie has also created small bronze statuettes based on Moore-Jones's most famous work, entitled Henderson and his Donkey.