French Influence In Sydney Thompson’s Work

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29909, 24 August 1962, Page 16

French Influence In Sydney Thompson’s Work

Sydney L. Thompson, who. at the age of 85, has been given a large retrospective exhibition by the Canterbury Society of Arts—now on show at the Durham street art gallery—is one of the few survivors of that generation of New Zealand painters who found a necessity to work abroad. I,ike Frances Hodgkins, he was first taught in New Zealand by a professional painter from Europe—-in his case. Petrus van der Velden. At this stage his painting was in the best brown Dutch academic manner. Lessons with van der Velden began when he was 18 and he later went to Australia. Britain and France —but just when this was. the catalogue does not say

The catalogue in fact is quite inadequate for a retrospective exhibition. We are told when Mr Thompson was born, when he first had lessons in Canterbury and with whom, and when he was married. The only other chronological fact given is that he was awarded the OBE. in 1936. and that cannot be counted as having much relevance to his development as a painter.

All we are told is that after his lessons with van der Velden. “he never looked back ” On the crucial facts of whom he met in France, what paintings he saw there and how his style came to change so substantially, the catalogue is tantalisingly

Anyway it is obvious that he was much affected by the Impressionists, and perhaps the Fauves, for about 1911 he began to turn to fresh, clear, sunlit colour. This debt to the Impressionists is very clearly seen in such works as “The Woman in White” • 1913) and “Sunflowers. Beuzec” (1914). It is easy to imagine the effect works

such as these and the “Wisteria and Canary Cage" of 1»17 and “Yan on the Terrace at Bormes” (1917) must have had on New Zealand painters when they were shown here.

These paintings are a hedonic celebration of the joy of the moment and thc:r effect on the viewer is the same. The colour gives instant pleasure but when th s initial impression is ass m - lated there is little to hold the attention. The less sensuous but more important matters of form and composition have been given scant attention by the painter and the actual handling of the paint, although free enough, is disconcertingly prosaic, even insensitive. Mr Thompson does not seem to have taken any interest in later developments in French painting and his style has hardly changed since that early discovery of colour. In later years, however, the freshness of the early works reappears infrequently. Mr Thompson has divided his time between France and New Zealand, but he has never become a New Zealand painter. The blossoming trees and the harbours of France have evoked from him a stronger response than the mountains and lakes of New Zealand, but he will be remembered for bringing a breath of the new winds of European art to New Zealand and for opening the eyes of New Zealand painters to colour. —J.N.K.