E. Mervyn Taylor

Te Ao Hou, September 1964, Page 19

E. Mervyn Taylor The death occurred in Wellington last June of Mr E. Mervyn Taylor, the well-known Wellington artist. He was aged 57. Mr Taylor began his career as a jewellery engraver, later becoming widely known for his meticulously executed wood engravings. He was also a painter of water colours and murals, and more recently he had taken up wood sculpture. In every field of art in which he worked he was an exceptionally accomplished and skilful craftsman. Many of his works, especially his wood engravings and sculpture, depict subjects taken from Maori mythology. A few years ago, when he won the Association of New Zealand Artists Society two-year £1,000 fellowship, he elected to remain in this country studying Polynesian mythology rather than to go overseas. Many of his wood-engravings on Maori subjects were published as book illustrations, and many of them appeared in ‘Te Ao Hou’. Mr Taylor was a Fellow of the International Institute of Arts and Letters, and a member of the National Art Gallery's management committee. He is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.