At the time, some critics responded to it by saying it went "counter to good tradition" or that it smacked of commercial art,[2] while others defended her saying: unwatered by the tradition of the British landscapists, our debt to her in this matter is greatLovell-Smith can be understood as part of a movement of New Zealand artists in the 1930s, including Olivia Spencer-Bower, Rita Angus, and brothers James and Alfred Cook, whom art writers A.R.D Fairburn, James Shelley and '"Conrad" recognised as providing a "new manner" of painting better representing New Zealand and its light.
This included the removal of romantic or golden mist and soft warm colour, and a move towards clear hard light, and displaying sheer, sharp, more linear forms.
[4] We must draw rather than paint, even if we are using a brush, or we shall not be perfectly truthfulFrom 1924 until 1966 Lovell-Smith exhibited at the Canterbury Society of Art.
From 1935 she regularly exhibited with The Group (with Cora Wilding, Ngaio Marsh, Evelyn Page, and Louise Henderson).
[7] Rata Alice Bird married fellow artist Colin Stuart Lovell-Smith (1894-1960) 8 February 1922.