Sir Mountford Tosswill "Toss" Woollaston (1910 – 1998) is widely regarded as a pioneer of the New Zealand modern art movement and one of New Zealand's foremost landscape painters. Woollaston is best known for the large landscape panels he painted in his sixties and seventies. He loved the drama of Wellington’s Makara coast, painting smaller jewel-like landscape studies in ‘plein air’ capturing its unique, mysterious and changing light in a quick, impressionistic technique.

Woollaston’s artwork reflects his intimate feeling for dramatic landscape and was influenced by Cézanne’s dedication to continually exploring familiar landscapes and Monet’s painted ‘floating worlds’. Woollaston sought to capture emotional connections through his responsive palette and expressive brushstrokes; philosophising that “painting from nature is not copying the object, it is realising one’s sensations”.

Born in Taranaki and educated at the Canterbury College School of Art, Woollaston worked as an orchardist and salesman, exhibiting in major exhibitions alongside Colin McCahon. In 1962, he travelled to Europe and the United States, and with other New Zealand artists, exhibited at Expo ‘70 in Japan and in a touring exhibition through the United States and Canada. Woollaston was knighted for his services to art in 1979, and represented New Zealand at the International Expo ’92 in Spain.