London-born watercolorist and landscape painter William Hodgkins founded the Otago Art Society in 1875 and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1884, the first in New Zealand. Since 1966, the art museum has been housed within The Octagon in the former headquarters of D. I. C., a department stored founded in Dunedin in 1884. Among its extensive collection are works by New Zealanders – such as Frances Hodgkins, the founder’s daughter – and European old masters including French painters Claude Monet and Claude Lorrain. Also exhibited are Japanese and Australian art.
