Gilbert Trevor Moffitt (15 August 1936 – 4 April 2006) was a New Zealand artist, arguably one of the country's leading narrative painters.
Moffitt's father Bert was a casual rural labourer, but by the mid-1940s, within a decade of Trevor's birth, the writing was on the wall for such roles.
Unlike many of his contemporaries whose work pursued a nationalism based on the landscape, Moffitt's interests resided in locating the human figure in the land.
Often confrontational in its honesty, his bold, direct expressionist style was considered almost primitive and this led to slow recognition of his talent; Moffit produced figurative and narrative work when all around him were creating international modernism.
Painted in 1964 to 1965 whilst working in Timaru, based on the life of James McKenzie a New Zealand folk hero and drover who was found with some 1000 stolen sheep in 1855.
Trevor Moffitt explained why he chose Stanley Graham as the subject for a series of oil paintings: "I felt an empathy for him.
[4] While Moffitt's work was admired by his peers, it was only shortly before his death when he began to receive substantial national attention.