Louise Henderson

Dame Louise Etiennette Sidonie Henderson (née Sauze, 21 April 1902 – 27 June 1994) was a French-New Zealand artist and painter. Life Louise Etiennette Sidonie Sauze was born on 21 April 1902 at Boulogne sur Seine, Paris, France, the only child of Lucie Jeanne Alphonsine Guerin and her husband, Daniel Paul Louis Sauze, secretary to the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Louise remembered how as a child she would go with her father to Rodin's house at Meudon and play with chips of marble while the men talked. In Paris she met her future husband Hubert Henderson, a New Zealander. Hubert returned to New Zealand in 1923 and proposed to Louise, but propriety demanded that a single woman not travel alone to New Zealand. She was married to Hubert by proxy at the British Embassy in Paris before emigrating to New Zealand in 1925 and settling with her husband in Christchurch where she began studies at the Canterbury School of Art. After earning her diploma in 1931 she went on to teach at the school.