The following year, her family moved to Dunedin, New Zealand, where her father, who had been a timber merchant, was engaged in the sub-treasurer's office as a clerk.

[2] Her study of an Italian goatherd won a gold medal in the Prix de Rome competition,[3] and was considered her masterpiece.

[3] On 19 September 1888 in Wellington, Sperrey married Captain Gilbert Mair, whose portrait she had painted in 1886 when he had been awarded the New Zealand Cross.

[2][6] Mair was a soldier and civil servant, who had previously fathered two sons and a daughter with the Ngāti Tūwharetoa woman, Keita Kupa.

[2] In 1889, Mair created paintings which earned first, second and third prizes, in the oil and water colour category of the Melbourne Fine Art Exhibit.

[2] In 1890, for New Zealand's Golden Jubilee, Musings in Maoriland, by Thomas Bracken was published outlining the colony's development of art and literature.