PRAISE FOR OUR CITY.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19852, 13 February 1930, Page 5

PRAISE FOR OUR CITY.

GROWTH IN SEVENTEEN YEARS.

AN ARTIST'S APPRECIATION. Returning to Christehurch after an absence of seventeen years, during which time he has lived in Sydney, Mr J. Lawson Balfour, portrait painter, who previously was a resident of the City for over nine years, told a representative of The Press yesterday that he was impressed with the progress that had been made here during the intervening period. "Christehurch is a very much more important looking place than it was when I left it seventeen years ago," he said. "At that time it looked like a small town —there was nothing metropolitan about it—but in the interim new buildings have been erected, and the old-fashioned verandahs with supporting posts have been replaced i>y modern structures. Altogether Christchurch is like a City to-day, and it made a very favourable impression on me when I was driven over the hill from Lyttelton this morning, in beautiful weather."

He considered that the Bridge of Remembrance, in Cashel street, was a fine and imposing piece of architecture, and stated that he liked the gardens of the City, the Avon, and the generally improved appearance of Christehurch, which had a civic look about it, previously lacking. During his absence it had in no wise lost its English atmosphere, nor did he think it ever would.

As an artist, he expressed himself as pleased to learn that the City was shortly to have a new Art Gallery, thanks to the generosity of Mr R. E. McDougall, and that the Jamieson collection was to bo housed in it.