G. B. SHAW AND PICTURES

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21139, 14 April 1934, Page 15

G. B. SHAW AND PICTURES

AN HOUR IN THE MCDOUGALL GALLERY .jjj.jjii.ii -uRUTeii zoa tub i'&zss.; I i; y 0. .M. L. LESTER, j Bv an unexpected stroke of fortune 0 n Tuesday last I spent a most deb' tful hour with Mr Shaw among the pictures. It was my pleasant duty to conduct him over th e Robert McDougall gallery, and I found him so kindly, so genial, and so wittv that any prejudice I m i«.ht have held against him as a promiscuous iconoclast vanished into thin air. After a few word* about people who we both had known in the >»o's I ventured to remind him that' besides these mutual friends we had this in common, that we both were frauds. "How do you make out that?" lie said, cocking a hirsute but kindly eyebrow at me. '•Well " I said, "we both have been art critics for a newspaper, and have thereby induced people to think we knew something about pictures." He laughed heartily, and replied, "Well, my excuse must be that I did it for my bread and cheese!" As we entered the gallery he gave it his unqualified approval, both as to its architecture, and as to the .lighting of the different bays. He then proceeded to make a thorough examination of the pictures. I doubt if he missed one. Those Iwhich he picked out for special notice were these: Van der Velden's Funeral, and the same artist's painting of a fisherman's head, which I was glad to find he thought the best picture in the gallery. Mr Nichol's portraits appeared to be the next in his scale of appreciation, both that of Mr Harper and that of the donor of the gallery, Mr McDougall. He was interested, too, in the small female head by Lord Leighton, and used it as a peg on which to hang a few wise remarks on the neglect of craftsmanship in painting which made so many modern pictures weak and unconvincing. I showed him Samuel Butler's self-portrait, and told him how f had rescued it from a dark corner in the library, and by permission of the governing body of Canterbury College had secured it for the McDougall Gallery. He seemed •to take more interest in this portrait than in any other picture, and in answer to a question from me said that although its artistic merit was not great, we were right in ;giving it a place in the Gallery. I. Landscapes j 'i. j only landscape by a New Zealand painter which he specially noticed was one by Miss Richmond 'of the Southern Alps. This, both as to subject and painting, he much fdmired. Of the large picture of Lccia and the Swan which hangs at the end of one of the long rooms he said, "This picture should be useful as teaching students how not to paint." He then gave me a brilliant little comparison of the attitude of the British public to the nude, in the clays ■ ' our youth, and at the present time. Of Goldie's portraits of Maoris, he said that though good of their kind, they were little more than coloured photographs, and ought to find their place in the museum rather than in the art gallery. For the of the pictures he had a cheery word of recognition, for he knew, of course, most of the English painters, and threw in a few remarks on their distinctive styles. I was agreeably surprised to find what emphasis he laid on the craftsmanship of painting, and the value he attached to the work of some academicians, whose pictures he otherwise disliked, simply from this point of view. He said that much modern work was to him weak and unconvincing for lack of skill in the painter's art, which you could almost take for granted in the work of the older men. We agreed that perfect drawings were perhaps the most satisfying form of art. I reminded him of some very fine examples by Lord leighton which 1 had seen in the print room of the British Museum, and he went one better by referring to the wonderful Raphael drawings In the Oxford, Cambridge, and Windsor collections. I did not ask him directly what he thought of the gallery as a whole, but we came I think to the tacit understanding, that like many other galleries it possessed a few good pictures, a larger number of respectable pictures, and a residuum of padding. Grants for Pictures He asked how we secured paintings for our gallery, and I replied that we relied mainly on private benefactions, checked by the decision of an advisory committee of the City Council: but that the City Council had also from time to time made small grants for the purchase of pictures. "Ah, those grants," said Mr Shaw, "they are the making of poor collections!" He went on to explain this by contrasting the Manchester collection, in his opinion a very poor one, with that of Birmingham, which he much admired. In Manchester an annual grant was made by th: city, and the governing body of their gallery thought it its duty to expend this sum within the year. As a result they acquired many very mediocre pictures. In Birmingham on the other hand a | 'fv able curator when he saw a ', . -f ure which he thought the gallery t-ight to posseri bought it on the *'edit of the city, and then sought out some rich citizen, and persuaded "im that it would be a noble ace to Present just this picture to the e 'ty. It rather amused me, and I think Mr Shaw shared my amusement, to hear so well advertised a democrat, declaring for one man control, at least in matters of art. I shall finish these brief notes with »story which seemed to amuse Mr Shaw as much as it did me. He told that some years ago he had his Portrait painted by an eminent Jainter, and was much gratified to k?ear that it had been hung on the I'ftte at the Academy. "Unfortu- | "ately," he said, "before the acadJtoy opened that blustering fellow Runnings came in and said, 'Who "as hung t'u't b'oody scarecrow on the line'?" "The result was," said Mr | | ™law with a twinkle, "that my por- j ,r ait was never hung at all." I