Departures of note

After the death of his father in 1960, Colin Webster-Watson suffered a breakdown and moved to Italy. While running an orphanage in Alberobello, he discovered a love of sculpture and soon established a studio in Rome. His patrons during this time included Gloria Swanson, Carroll Baker, Morris West, Robert Ardrey, Harold Robbins, and Henry Rothschild, and his work also entered the collection of Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis.

Born in Palmerston North, New Zealand, in 1926, Webster-Watson attended Palmerston North Boys' High School. At age twenty, he traveled to Japan with the Commonwealth Occupation Force, where his army superiors deemed he would be better employed as an entertainer than a soldier and gave him responsibility for organizing concerts for the troops. In 1954, he moved to London to become a dancer and comedian at the Windmill Theatre, and for a time also worked as a radio sports reporter in Wales.

Webster-Watson married Jane Ewing in New York in the 1980s, and they lived in Wainscott on Long Island. In 1990, he moved to Palm Springs, California, where he lived until 2004, when he returned to New Zealand. He died in 2007 in Eastbourne. He donated several works to Wellington, including Tail of the Whale (Oriental Bay), Frenzy (Ōwhiro Bay), Prowling Cheetah (Wellington Zoo), Mountain of Dreams (Wellington Zoo), and La Famiglia (Wellington Hospital).