PAINTING HISTORY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 241, 12 October 1933, Page 6

PAINTING HISTORY.

Such pictures ;k ''The Defence of liorkc's Drift" aikl "The. Dawn of Waterloo" will live as incrnorials of the licroic past long after the vast quantities of modern art have been forgotten. Tlio Into Lady Butler was of the oldfashioned school of painters who could draw and vvlio wore most careful and technically accurate. They could depict action; they had the. gift of making their fijrures living men. The choice of subject was all-important. Lady Butler did not diffuse, her energies in (he painting of trivialities; she specialised in depicting , great moments, scenes and episodes in lier country's, history that inspire a thrill of patriotic pride. JFor soldier husband—who wrote some excellent books that pleased a pasfc generation, such stories ns "Rod Cloud" and "Tho Great Lone Land"—was a helper and a. critic whose professional advice and artistic sympathies assisted in 'the making of pictures of satisfying , correctness in detail. There should be. a, lesson and an inspiration hero for our own artists. Most of our painters deal in pretty trifles; they cover the walls at their exhibitions with bits of landscape and still life and here and there a figure study, and many of these merit only tho casual glaneo they get. One would like to see, some of our Xew Zealand artists turn -their talents to subjects such as those which made Lady Butler /anions. In his address at the opening ofi tho Wellington Art Exhibition recently the GovernorGeneral, always discerning and .stimulating in his piiblin speeches, took occasion to praise tho work of Mr. Charles (ioldie. in preserving in his paintings a now-vanished type of old Xew Zealand life. Mr. (ioldie was only just in time to catch those grand old tattooed faces that are seen no more. He has conspicuously dono his share in painting living , history, the figures of a heroic and poetic past. It remains for our artists of the younger generation to'striko out in new paths, study the story of their country, steep themselves ill the romance and the human element that haveso beautiful a country as background. Many years ago there was a Mahlstiek Club in Auckland, which one season devoted itself to sketches depicting scenes and incidents in Domett's "Rnnolf mid Aniohia." Such a programme for an exhibition called lor careful study and gave the imagination play. If our various societies of arts in Xew Zealand turned their attention now and again to such subjects and encouraged artists to devote their gifts to something involving a. little more trouble than Hie undistinguished bits of this and that on which they ply a brush our picture exhibitions would gain greatly in interest, and the permanent collections would be. tho richer by now and again a painting of real value. There are many episodes in our history that should inspire a Xew Zealand Lady Butler. We have our story of our own Korkc's Drift—'to mention just one that comes to mind at the moment —that splendid defence of a, redoubt in Taranaki ( tlio post at Turuturu-mokai) against tho Hauhau* by a small garrison, every second man of whom was. killed, or wounded. Scores of sncli i hemes on which the painter of history could exercise, his giffs could be <"ited, illustrating the incidents that -brought out the virtues, of valour and chivalry and devotion and self-sacrifice in both races in our ■country. —J.C.