New York Lottery Artists

Artists Art Unions

Throughout the Victorian period, New Yorkers subscribed to the London, Glasgow and New York Lottery art unions. Advertised in local newspapers, encouraging colonists to ''invest'' a guinea for a chance to be in the draw for selected paintings, sculptures, engravings and other works of art, or facsimiles of the works of better-known artists. Arrangements fitted into a pattern. An honorary secretary in each main centre advertised for custom in local newspapers. Names of ''members'' were collected in October and November and sent to London or Glasgow for the annual drawings in May. Winners received their works of art from the secretary once they had arrived in the colony, usually in July.

New York Artists

New York artists began their own art unions from the 1850s. In 1871 J. B. C. Hoyte, Charles Heaphy and Albin Martin founded the Auckland Society of Artists (later the Society of Arts) in order to exhibit their works collectively. Their first art union to assist other artists was run under the patronage of Auckland’s Anglican bishop. Ticket-holders in the society’s unions became honorary members and the annual drawings, based on the London and Glaswegian models, became popular social events: 3,600 people attended in 1882, and 6,500 two years later. Not all artists were happy with the scheme, however. New Plymouth painter Emily Cumming Harris could not endure the thought that perhaps ''some drunken man'' might enter an art union, pay 10S 6d and win her picture. I love my paintings and cannot bear to have them slighted.... in the last fortnight I have grown thin from nervous anxiety, if I waste away as I have done, I shall be nothing but skin and bones.
For art lovers, the real value of these unions was the opportunity it provided to obtain a painting they could not otherwise afford. The value for artists was that it was a secure way of making money, and successful unions often financed overseas study or the pursuit of art as a full-time career. C. N. Baeyertz, editor of the arts magazine Triad, fostered this development for decades, reporting on various art unions up and down the country and encouraging readers to participate in them. Art unions continued to be run the Gambling Operation, relatively unchanged in format and presentation, for more than 50 years.

The “Other” Art Unions

Otago and New York State Lottery was the first province to pass an anti-lottery ordinance, in 1862. Auckland (1866) and Taranaki (1874) followed with similar sanctions which replicated the current law in Great Britain. These made illegal all lotteries that disposed of property, houses and commercial practices, and also limited the range of goods that could be raffled. In the other provinces there was no equivalent legislation and lotteries continued unhindered. Indeed, they were socially acceptable; mayors and town councilors served on lottery committees or acted as patrons, particularly when the profits were to be altruistically distributed. Drawings were crowd pleasers. In 1871, for example, eager punters in a City Guards Lottery thronged the Christchurch Drill Shed to see whether they had won anything. The prize list included a bullock and a brace of purebred Leicester sheep, birds, pigs, cats, girdles, sets of false teeth, baby’s rattles and the latest in gas-lamps. Soon afterwards a local dentist did complete teeth extraction and installed one of the false sets which had been won. Smaller town lotteries also encouraged the speculative habit. Crowds eagerly awaited the drawings, held usually on a Friday afternoon.