$60,000 art show

Press, 14 September 1976, Page 11

$60,000 art show

Paintings and drawings worth $60,300 by the Dutch artist, Petrus van der Velden, are being exhibited at the Brooke/Gifford Gallery, Manchester Street, by Gerrit van Asch, a descendant of the man who encouraged Van der Velden to migrate to Christchurch in 1890. Many of them have been sold, including the two most expensive works in the exhibition — a large stormy painting of Mount Rolleston priced at $17,000, and a painting of a funeral procession at the Dutch fishing village of Marken, priced at $15,000. The Mount Rolleston picture is a companion piece to another version

of Mount Rolleston in the Robert McDougall collection. Van der Velden visited the Otira Gorge in 1891 and gathered material for a series of more than 30 important works. He made his first visit there with three companions in a covered waggon, and returned alone to Otira many times. He painted when rain was threatening. working among the boulders of the riverbed until he had completely absorbed the atmosphere of the place. Then he would hurry back to his Christchurch studio to get' it all down on canvas. The funeral painting is one of a cycle of paintings based on life and death in

the village of Marken. Another much larger work on the same theme is in the McDougall Gallery. The present exhibition also includes charcoal studies of Marken bargemen propelling the funeral barge, and of people transporting the coffin from the boat harbour. The oil painting is one of six major funeral paintings. One of the most interesting of several charcoal drawings in the collection is a self-portrait (illustrated). The exhibition is also enlivened by a display of photographs of Van der Velden at work, probably in his Christchurch studio. The exhibition will continue to September 17.