Born in Dunedin in 1919, Colin Vernon Wheeler studied at the Canterbury School of Art and Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London. He moved to Oamaru, in the South Island, New Zealand in 1951 and taught art at Waitiki Boys’ High School, resigning in the late 1960s to paint and write full-time. Works by him are held in major New Zealand galleries and include paintings of the rural Otago landscape.

The distinctive, rich colours and strong forms in this painting reflect Wheeler’s debt to Modernism and the influence of his training in London. He was the author and illustrator of book on Historic Sheep Stations of the South Island (pub. 1968) and some of his painted depictions of isolated sheep farms have a surreal quality, reminiscent perhaps of the work of Paul Nash.

A label on the reverse records the title as :A woolshed in the foothills of the Kakanui Range, North Otago, New Zealand.