Roland Shakespeare Wakelin (1887-1971), artist, was born on 17 April 1887 at Greytown, New Zealand, youngest of seven children of Richard Alfred Wakelin, an English-born timber merchant, and his wife Emily, née Noakes, from Auckland. Roland began sketching and painting as a boy. Educated at Wellington Technical School on a scholarship in 1902-03, while employed with the Land and Income Tax Department he continued night and Saturday art classes at the school under Henri Bastings and H. Linley Richardson and exhibited at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts.