Peter Webb Gallery occupied a small room on the top floor of Argus House, 24 High Street.
[8] At that time, Webb was also active in publishing, offering for sale a set of four prints by Colin McCahon, the lithographic series Puketutu,[9] and two by Gabrielle Hope.
[2] Toss Woollaston was offered the same opportunity by Webb and, while initially agreeing, he was unable to travel to Auckland to work on the plates.
Using the middle name of his friend Hamish Keith, Cordy's was the first auction house in New Zealand to specialise in art as a separate category.
[18] The Auckland Art Gallery director at the time, Richard Teller Hirsch, wrote of Webb in the catalogue acknowledgements that his "creative and effective intensity" and "persuasive eloquence" were key to the project's success.
The first issue was published in August 1976, the editorial noting that there had been "no regular New Zealand journal devoted entirely to the visual arts since the end of the 'forties" and that there was "no adequate consideration given to the growing number of exhibitions of contemporary painting and sculpture".
[20] This situation had been underlined by news that art critic Hamish Keith's regular reviews in the Auckland Star were to be discontinued.
Although the auction side of the business continued, Peter Webb Galleries closed in 1993 with the exhibition Colin McCahon: The Last Painting.
[31] In 1979, with the help of lawyer and art collector Warwick Brown and banker Graham Reeves, Webb formed the Prospect Collection.