Paintings, drawings by Louise Henderson

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33005, 26 August 1972, Page 17

Paintings, drawings by Louise Henderson

The Auckland painter Louise Henderson has 40 paintings and drawings in a one-man exhibition at the Canterbury Society of Arts Gallery. Mrs Henderson, who originally came to New Zealand from Paris, is well known throughout New Zealand not only for her painting but as a designer of stainglass windows, mosaics, collage murals and tapestries. Her present exhibition is called “Bush Revisited" and deals specifically with the edge where sand and bush meet. She also exhibits some works relating to an earlier “Bush” series. Taken as a whole the exhibition is tropically lush in both colour and forms. In the earlier paintings green is the dominant colour, the light is diffuse and the leaf shapes are simplified, collectively they are more effective than viewed in isolation. In the “Bush Revisited Series” the forms are spikey and clearly defined and a variety of plant life is suggested. Colour is decorative rather than factual, and sharp contrasts of light and dark compete for dominance. Her water colours by contrast are loosely conceived washes of bright colour that bear little direct relationships to her larger works. The exhibition will remain open until September 12.— An exhibition of drawings and engravings by the English caricaturist, Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), is being shown at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery. The exhibition has been assembled from the Auckland City Gallery permanent collection, the Reed Collec-

tion, the Dunedin Public Library collection. and the Robert McDougall Art Gallery collection. In an introduction to the catalogue, P. A. Tomory describes Rowlandson as “an artist who can on occasion rank with the best in drawing and water colour.” His themes are often ones of ribaldry, gluttony, vanity and lust, but unlike Hogarth he does not appear to see any inherent evil in these; rather he condones and finds humour in them. At times the facial expressions of his characters are quite superb, as in the maid in “At the Inn” whose look is half incredulous, half curious as she ushers into a bedroom a very ugly and obese man and his wife, or the lawyer in a “Dictated Letter” whose nose nearly meets his chin. Because Rowlandson was such a good reporter of his times, much of the humour in the set of coloured engravings on “Horse Accomplishments” is probably lost on many people living in this age of the motorvehicle but in the illustrations for “Boswells Tour of the Hebrides” are timeless situations of human response. The exhibition will remain open until the end of the month.—G.T.M.